DER HEXENJÄGER
by BillyDeeWilliams
Summary: Erich Duquesne is no ordinary witch hunter. He's not a fanatic. He's a detective, and he finds himself under suspicion of treason himself after two Tzeentchian revolts only a month apart nearly destroy the river city of Carroburg. Who is behind the cult? Will they be brought to justice? Will Duquesne burn?
1. I: DIE AUSLÄNDER

Welcome to my fic; by the way, the title is German for The Witch Hunter. I've tried something a little experimental here with the perspectives; it switches between third and first person, settling on first in later chapters. It should be clear when that happens, but I'm not sure what effect it has on the pacing. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this and any other topic in the reviews.

This Warhammer Fantasy fic is set long before the Storm of Chaos, the End Times, and the Age of Sigmar. None of that is relevant to this fic. I've tried writing Warhammer Fantasy fics in the past, and they always spiral into massive, apocalyptic stakes, which made the writing feel oppressive, especially with the constant retcons around the Storm of Chaos (which was cool), the End Times (which were arguably even cooler), and the Age of Sigmar (about which I'm skeptical). Those also aren't the environment in which I can tell the kinds of stories I want to tell. So, please enjoy my lower (but by no means actually low) stakes detective story. You should expect a little gratuitous French, German, and Latin in this fic, none of which is necessary to understand and which I hope is not distracting.

1/27/17: Consolidated chapters.

* * *

"And we are on the record in the matter of Imperial Inquiry CI2367, into the events surrounding the riots that consumed the city of Carroburg this last 1st of Sommerzeit and Sonnstill, in the eleventh year of Emperor Karl Franz, or the year of Sigmar's Empire 2513. We are convened here for the deposition of one Erich Duquesne, before commissioners Cornelis de Smedt, Heinrich von Worlitz, and Albrecht Ollenhauer."

"Thank the gods we got all that out of the way," Duquesne cut in dryly. Duquesne was not tall, but he was strongly built. He had a slight paunch, but it obviously sat atop layers of hard muscle. He had dark green eyes, dark hair and several days of salt-and-pepper stubble on his chin. He had several small scars on his face, and one much larger one behind his left ear, which disappeared into his graying black hair at one end, and into the collar of his shirt at the other. The heavy lines on his face made him look older than his forty-two years.

He had removed his tall, wide-brimmed leather hat and set it on the table, transposed between himself and his interrogators like a rampart. His heavy black brigandine overcoat hung on a rack near the door, the warding symbols on the riveted plates just barely visible, its great weight causing the coat rack to teeter almost imperceptibly as the garment shifted minutely in the slight breeze that blew in through the tiny windows piercing the fortress walls enclosing him. He wore a reddish-brown leather jerkin with Sigmar's twin-tailed comet over the heart, and underneath it, an understated dark grey doublet, with a slight ruff of rather poor lace peeking out over the collar of the jerkin. The cuffs of his worn leather breeches were stuffed into the legs of his tall boots, caked with mud.

"Yes. The formalities must be observed," de Smedt said, with a touch of asperity. De Smedt was exceptionally tall, and equally slender, and probably would have looked a like a starved vulture but for the solemn gravitas he radiated. His cheeks and sea-green eyes were heavily sunken, giving him a slightly skeletal look that was rather disconcertingly contradicted by his medium tan. His body below the chin was invisible underneath his elaborate robes and gold-and-ruby collar of state, signifying his exalted status as Lord High Inquisitor for Reikland West. Duquesne thought it was odd that a Reikland official was heading proceedings in Middenland, but suspected it was the result of some ordinary political maneuverings.

Most Lords High Inquisitor were former witch hunters themselves or at least members of Sigmar's priesthood. But Duquesne's source in the Imperial Civil Service told him that de Smedt was neither. His previous posting, apparently, had been as Secretary of Customs & Excise for Reikland. He was reputed to enjoy the trust of the Emperor. Indeed, Duquesne noted that de Smedt bore a small ring on his right hand, on which was engraved an almost unreadable inscription: C.F.S.G.I.S.A. or Carolus Franciscus, Sigmar Gratia Imperator Semper Augustus in the Classical tongue.

"Obviously."

De Smedt ignored Duquesne's sarcasm, and continued, "Now then, please state your full name for the record."

"You just said my name, on the record."

"Yes, and now we need it from you, in full. If you please."

Duquesnesighed, "Charles Erich van Duquesne. Just call me Duquesne. I don't use the particle."

"Very well, Herr Duquesne. What is your occupation?"

"I am Junior Templar, First Grade, of the Church of Sigmar."

"And to what division are you assigned?"

"Strictly speaking, none. I am currently confined to a cell in this fortress."

"What was your last assignment, then?"

"Criminal & Chaotic Investigation."

"How many colleagues serve with you in that division?"

"None, since my last partner was killed."

"And are you a natural born citizen of the Empire?"

"No."

"Where were you born?"

"At Château Duquesne in the Marches of Couronne."

"You are a Bretonnian nobleman by birth?"

"Yes and no. Yes, in the legal sense."

"Is your family unpopular?"

"They were when I left."

"Why?"

"Among other things, we are partially descended from Norse raiders."

"Ah. Chaos worshippers in your past?"

"About twenty generations ago. But you knew that."

De Smedt, to his credit, betrayed nothing. Duquesne didn't react. He'd hoped he could get the commissioner to reveal at least some of his hand with a little prodding. Most Imperial bureaucrats loved to gloat. Not de Smedt, apparently, though they were just getting started.

"You were raised in the Cult of the Lady?"

"I was, but we also kept UIric and Taal in my father's house. It was part of why the blue bloods didn't like us."

"Do you have any siblings?"

"Two older brothers, and three sisters."

"And what are their conditions?"

"Richard, the eldest, is training to succeed my father at the King's court. Jasper is serving with some bearded horse lord in the Troll Country. Sibylle is married to a minor count in Bastonne, Jeanne is married to a merchant prince in Marienburg, and Marie teaches chemistry at Imperial University."

"Diverse paths in your family."

"My father is an horrific tyrant. Parents like that drive children away."

"Indeed. So why did you leave Bretonnia?"

"Well, that's the other reason my father's peers don't like him. The King paid us a visit with his whole entourage, and there was a misunderstanding."

"Enlighten me."

"It involved a woman."

"Whom?"

"I think it was the Queen's second cousin or something like that. The King didn't care, but the Queen wanted all our heads. In the end, I was banished and my family suffered under a number of tedious feudal penalties."

"How old were you at the time?"

"Sixteen."

"Where did you go?"

"Estalia, mercenary, bodyguard, thug. Tilea, professional mercenary, service in the Border Princes and with Dwarfs. Then the Empire."

"How did you end up in the Empire?"

"I was old. Wasn't cut out for mercenary work anymore. I took my back pay, and came here."

"And what did you do in the Empire?"

"I attended the University at Nuln. Graduated with a Bachelor of Humanities. Then to the School of Gunnery."

"Were you in the artillery as a mercenary?"

"I fought with Dwarfs, who rarely left their guns at home. I'm a fast learner, and the School's Chief of Manufacturing, a Dwarf, was the brother of a friend."

"You are a Dwarf Friend?"

"Not remotely. Just had a drinking buddy. I did meet a real Dwarf Friend. That man barely seemed human."

"I must admit, Herr Duquesne, none of this explaining how you became a Templar of Sigmar."

"Well, you didn't actually ask how that happened."

"Then how did it?"

"Well, after I wore out my welcome with the gunners, I had to find something else to do for a living. I settled on the Templars of Sigmar."

"Do you even worship Sigmar?"

"No less than anyone else in the Empire."

"Most Templars are devout."

"Most Templars are also assholes."

Again, de Smedt didn't rise to the bait. "Be that as it may, how did you secure a position in the Order, considering your lack of piety?"

"Well, as I'm sure you know, the Templars are long on devotion and strong, young bodies, but often short on intelligence, education, and quick thinking-"

"A little full of ourselves, aren't we, Herr Duquesne?" one of the other commissioners, von Worlitz, broke in with a sardonic smile

"I survived fighting an Ork warboss. I faced ten Arabyan cavaliers alone. I cheated a Tilean pirate admiral at cards and took his flagship, which I then burnt to the waterline. I insulted a Dwarf king to his face and then drank him under the table. I killed a Norscan marauder chief with his own weapon. I won a chess match against the Dean of Mathematics at the University. I put a round shot from a gun through a fifty-foot target a mile away. I served on the deck of a Dwarfen ironclad warship against Eldar corsairs. So yes, I'm really damned full of myself."

Duquesne knew that none of these were the whole story. The Warboss he had 'fought' had crossed blades with him exactly once before being felled by a cannonball to the face from 50 meters. The Arabyan cavaliers fell to infighting when they were deciding who would have the honor of first blood. Duquesne had dosed the Tilean pirate admiral's drink with opium before the card game, and burned the ship accidentally while fleeing from the admiral's vengeful men. The Dwarf 'King' was such in name only, his family having lost its hold centuries ago, and by the time he met Duquesne, was a broken alcoholic with nothing to his name and too cowardly to take the Slayer's Oath, and thus reviled by all Barak Varr. The Norscan marauder had dropped his weapon after Duquesne shot him in the back while the chieftain fled an ill-fated skirmish with Duquesne's mercenary company. Three days after his 'chess match' against the Dean of Mathematics, the 96-year-old man was committed to a hospice and lobotomized for possession, dying three more days thereafter. The gun had been set by a Dwarf master gunner, and Duquesne had merely pulled the lanyard. And the ironclad did not engage the corsairs at all.

"Yes," de Smedt said, with a short glare at von Worlitz, "and the answer to my question is?"

"I was recruited."

"Who recruited you?"

"He's dead."

"I'll be the judge of that. The name."

"No. I'm not going to let you smear a man who was a friend to me when I needed it."

"His name, Herr Duquesne."

"Make me."

"Don't tempt me, sir. I am more than willing to relocate this examination to a less…convivial setting."

"This you call convivial?"

"You heard me."

"And I said make me."

De Smedt turned to one of the clerks waiting by the door. "Get me von Hochschildt."

 _Shit_ , Duquesne thought. _I figured they were just going to torture me_. "My apologies, Meneer de Smedt. There's no need to disturb the mind reading freak."

"You don't like Herr von Hochschildt?"

Duquesne squinted at de Smedt, "You have met him, right?"

"Yes."

"Then you know."

De Smedt didn't pursue the digression further, asking simply for "The name. And I remind you that you are under oath. The penalty for perjury is rather…extreme."

"Georg von Kronzstadt."

De Smedt turned back to his clerk, "Investigate that name." He turned back to Duquesne, "If you're lying, and this man doesn't exist, or is alive, or was never a canon in the Church of Sigmar, you will hear of it."

"Oh gods, the burden."

"Will you desist with your sarcasm?" the other commissioner, Ollenhauer, said

"No, Herr Ollenhauer. It's my way of registering protest with this process."

"What in the process do you object to?" de Smedt asked

"The fact that I'm not drinking right now, which I should be doing."

De Smedt dropped the issue, appearing slightly embarrassed that he had risen to Duquesne's bait. "Where were you initially assigned as a member of the Templar order?"

"I trained in Altdorf for eight months, and then I was assigned to Middenheim for about two years. I've been in Carroburg the last three years."

"Who is your commanding officer?"

"Karl von Kalbach."

"His rank?"

"Paladin."

"Do you have an opinion of Herr von Kalbach?"

"He's a focused and confident officer."

"Is that all?"

"I don't think that much about my colleagues. I just do my job and let the rest sort itself out."

"Now, I don't think that's completely true. We've heard testimony from a number of your fellow Templars and read a number of reports to the effect that you and Herr von Kalbach clashed regularly."

"I'm a detective. Von Kalbach is a zealot. My work is based on reason and evidence. He adheres to a different standard."

De Smedt seemed to ignore him, "Specifically, you objected on several occasions to executions."

"I had evidence exculpating them. The only crime those people committed was being poor and in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Not according to the courts."

"The _ecclesiastical_ courts," Duquesne said with a sneer. "The bishop read von Kalbach's reports and convicted them in _absentia_ , without even convening a hearing. And if he saw my evidence, he ignored it. He just signed death warrants. The accused didn't get to say a word in their defense until they were tied to the pyre."

De Smedt regarded Duquesne coolly for a few seconds, and the left side of his mouth quirked slightly as said, "Regrettable, I'm sure."

Duquesne said nothing. He slouched in his chair, steepled his index fingers under his nose and stared at de Smedt's forehead unblinkingly.

When he was sure that he wouldn't be interrupted, de Smedt continued, "Do you have proof that the bishop failed to comply with Code of Ecclesiastical Procedure or the Code of Evidence?"

"No, if only because the records were altered, and the evidence went missing."

"Ah. Conspiracies everywhere it is with you, I see."

 _Hmm_. Duquesne thought. _Seems a little early to be lashing out._

"Is that a question?"

"What weapons do you carry with you in the line of duty?"

"I carry a double-barrel top-break pistol, a double-barrel holdout pistol, a hatchet, a dirk, two throwing knives, a gladius, and a rapier."

"That is quite an arsenal. I am informed that the Uniform Code of the Church of Sigmar mandates that its Templars carry a flintlock pistol, knife, and rapier only."

"Yes. I tried that. That's why I've got this," Duquesne said, standing and pulling up his shirt, jerkin, and doublet, to reveal a large, red scar covering the left side of his torso. "I put a bullet right between that Flamer's eyes, and it kept coming. That hasn't happened since I started carrying Arielle again."

"Arielle?"

"My mother. Also, coincidentally, the name of the Queen whose cousin I slept with," Duquesne said, yanking a huge chunk of black metal from his belt, which he set on the table with a thunk.

"Charming," de Smedt said with another twitch of his mouth. "I take it that is the weapon in question?"

"Indeed. Forged in Barak Varr and inscribed with Khazalid runes of striking, banishing and warding."

"How did you obtain a rune weapon?"

"Lesser runes. I had to call in every favor I had in the city, and some outside the city. I'm not welcome there anymore."

"You? Unwelcome somewhere? Perish the thought," Ollenhauer interjected.

Before de Smedt could reign his man in, Duquesne said, "I'm beginning to think you don't like me much, Herr Ollenhauer."

"I-"

"Enough," de Smedt said shortly and without heat. "Now, Herr Duquesne, let us turn to the matter at hand: your investigation."

"Oh, let us."

"So, tell us about what happened in the early morning of the 1st of Sommerzeit?"

"Well, it was hot as Khorne's balls. I remember that. And I was on duty…"

* * *

"Templar! Templar!" the boy shouted, as he burst through the door of the chapterhouse, where I was, as usual, the watch officer for the early morning.

"What?! I'm trying read back here."

The messenger skidded into my office, stopping just short of slamming into my oak desk, shortly followed by my first sergeant, Fritz Uhl, who I dismissed with a wave. "Well? What is it boy?"

"There's a riot, sir."

"Do I look like the watch? Get them."

"I did, sir. I only came after they attacked the mob."

"And what happened when they did?"

"The watch commander caught on fire. Bright blue fire, no red. Then the first rank caught on fire. Then the second. Then they ran. The poor quarters are aflame."

"Godsdamnitall. The Changer. Fritz!" I shouted, for some reason, since he was already in my office.

"Yes, Templar?"

"Roust the zealots, and all the men at arms. Saddle up. We've got daemons to kill."

"Aye, Captain."

"Can't call me that anymore."

"Yes, sir," Fritz said as he disappeared out the door.

Just as the bell began to ring throughout the chapterhouse, I turned to the boy and said, "Well done, boy. Get out of here, stay safe."

"Yes, lord," he said, bolting.

I spent the next few minutes strapping on my gear before departing for the stables, where grooms were preparing the chapterhouse's horses. A squire came up and belted a cuirass onto my torso. I swept the hat off my head, and it was replaced with a steel sallet. The squire tried to affix the visor, but I waved him off. I'd need to see if I was going to shoot.

I visually inspected the wards on the armor. It looked solid enough to let me survive until I came to grips with the enemy. I checked my pistol, which was really more of a cut-down rifle, and made sure it was loaded with two .50-70 brass cartridges. The Striker shone almost imperceptibly red, while the Banisher glowed a brighter blue. I slid my sword from its scabbard, checking it for rust. Satisfied, I leapt into the saddle. "Lance," I said to the groom, who pulled a 3-meter length of wood and steel from the magazine on one wall of the stable.

I hefted the weapon, and noted that it was slightly warped. As I tested its weight, several other Templars came into the stable, and grooms quickly outfitted them with armor and horses. I turned to them and said, "Lances, gentlemen. You do know how to use them, right?"

"Yes, sir," one of them, von Gleichen, said. Normally, I'd have had to endure some obduracy from my subordinates, many of whom were suspicious of my faith and nationality. Not tonight.

Ten minutes later, the whole chapterhouse, about thirty mounted men-at-arms, was assembled outside the stables. "Templars of Sigmar, move out!" I shouted, taking the lead with our chaplain, a fiercely white-bearded Warrior Priest of Sigmar, Konrad von Warburg. The holy man's massive warhammer hung from his saddle. In his right hand, he bore a lance like the rest of the chapter.

We rode down the Burgstrasse at a trot towards the nearest plaza, the Guntherplatz, where the riot was most intense. The Guntherplatz was also the heart of the city's poor quarter. Ahead of us, two scouts rode to clear the way. "I doubt they're encountering any resistance after they showed off the watch," I shouted to von Warburg. "Nowhere near the inner wall yet. The Duke is probably still marshalling his forces."

"One hopes," Konrad responded. "We should link up with them."

"No. We've got to put down this riot, keep the city from burning down, and then extinguish the taint. We can't wait for the Duke."

"We will all die."

"If it be so, then so be it."

Von Warburg's face lit up with a savage smile. " _Bien dit_ , _monsieur chevalier_."

No matter that he butchered my language, I couldn't keep a fierce grin from my face. "With luck, the rioters will be distracted with some debauchery and brutality," I said

"I would not underestimate the cunning of Tzeentchians," von Warburg cautioned, though his eyes were still bright.

The approach to the square was mercifully free of fleeing civilians, which was not to say that a few didn't get trampled. But, either the scouts had done their job and shunted the civilians into alleys, or they were all dead or joined the mob. I rather suspected the latter.

When we were within three hundred meters of the center of the riot, I turned to the chapter, raising my lance above my head, and shouted, "Pick up the pace!" The company thundered to a gallop, and within seconds we were lowering our lances.

"Follow me! Into the center! Don't break formation! _No_ mercy for traitors! _No_ respite! _No_ **_fear_**!"

We surged again, and I leaned forward in my saddle, my mouth split in a huge, feral smile. Several bolts of sorcerous fire slammed into our formation, but our wards deflected the worst of it, though several of my men began screaming piteously. Von Warburg retaliated, issuing a bolt of golden lightning from the point of his lance into the mass, flinging bodies and pieces of bodies high into the air.

I whispered under my breath, "Lady, guide my hand," as I aligned my lance with the head of a particularly large rioter, and then, as one, the whole chapter screamed, "SIGMAAAAR!"

Half a second later, the wedge impacted the crowd. Like a demigryph trampling tallgrass on the March, the chapter broke through the first eight ranks of the rioters in seconds, cleaving a massive bloody swath towards the evil blue light at is center. I dropped the broken lance, and Arielle flashed into my hand.

A group of apparently human rioters on my left resolved into a pack of pink horrors. I leveled Arielle at them, squeezing both triggers simultaneously. The Striker flared brightly, its magic adjusting my aim slightly and steadying my hand the instant before the firing pin struck the primer, and then absorbing most of the gun's hideous recoil. The massive rifle bullets, imbued with the power of the Banisher, exploded amid the horrors, destroying several. I opened the breech, ejecting the spent casings, and reached into a saddlebag, extracting two more brass-jacketed cartridges. I slammed them into the barrels, and snapped the weapon back together. I brought it back up just in time to fire a round into the face of a half-daemonic rioter with a halberd that threatened to kill my mount. The second bullet I fired into a Screamer that suddenly swept into the air from the center of the riot. As the daemon disintegrated, I reloaded and fired off another pair of rounds, felling a Flamer.

I dropped Arielle into a saddlebag, and switched to my sword. What I wouldn't give for a real longsword, or even a Bretonnian sidearm. Rapiers were shit from horseback. I dropped back slightly, into the center of my men, and after a moment's consideration, realized that our formation was about to break. "We're slowing down, Fritz! I don't like that! Slow is dead."

"Aye, sir! We've run into some stiff resistance on the right. We're starting to wheel in that direction, away from the center," the sergeant said as he hacked down at a rioter. _He_ got to carry a longsword.

"Unacceptable. Get them moving. Straight towards that terrifying blue light."

"Aye, aye, Captain."

"Don't call me that!" I said as I rode off to join von Warburg at the head of the group

"We're slowing down, Herr Templar. We'll be slaughtered if we don't get moving again," he said, leaning nearly out of his saddle to banish a daemon with his massive hammer.

"Already taken care of, Father. There was some foolishness on the right," I said, blasting another Flamer with Arielle. Each of her runes, the Striker, the Banisher, and the Bulwark glowed brightly, red, blue, and gold, the ancient and angry rune magic struggling to come to grips with their hated foe, seething all around them.

Before the plate-armored priest could respond, the horsemen behind us suddenly came abreast, and we spurred our horses on. I ditched Arielle again, and drew my sword, parrying and deflecting what felt like hundreds of blows. I had little time to strike, but my horse crushed dozens of unfortunate rioters and even a few minor daemons under her warded shoes.

Within minutes, we had crossed the final four ranks of protestors, and found ourselves in a clearing at the very center of the plaza, where the sickly blue light was almost blinding, and yet somehow illuminated nothing. The twelve or so surviving Templars and men-at-arms hesitated briefly. It was all their sorcerer needed. He (or maybe it was a she; fuck knows with the Changer), sent a forked bolt of profane energy into the company, felling the horses in front, including my own.

I was thrown from my horse, and heard Fritz shout, "Erich!" I flew in a flat, high-speed arc and I will swear that I flew directly over the heresiarch's head. I landed about fifty feet from where my horse had fallen, slamming into the uneven cobbles of the plaza. My wards absorbed some of the force. Not enough. I tried to move, but could barely stir. I struggled harder, but nothing. Behind me, I could hear my men being slaughtered and struggled harder, still to no avail. I strained harder, but only managed to collapse with a sob, and then felt unconsciousness threaten darkly at the corners of my vision. I fought it, but soon my vision was flickering, flickering, flick…

I awoke with a gasp-

* * *

Title note: 'Die Ausländer' is German for 'The Foreigners.'


	2. II: SCHMERZEN NICHT SCHÄDEN

"Why did you survive?" de Smedt broke in.

"What?"

"You survived. Everyone else died. Why?"

"I've asked myself that more times than I can count. And I have no idea." That was a lie. Duquesne had a theory, but wasn't sharing. "It must have been a mistake."

"In your experience, do Tzeentchians make that kind of mistake?"

"You might be surprised. People assume that Tzeentchian cultists are well organized because he's got the most sorcerers and the like. And it's true to an extent. But they forget, in the first place, that Tzeentch is a god of _Chaos_ , and second, that he's the god of change, or anarchy. In my experience, it depends on what kind of Tzeentchian is in the lead. If it's a magister-type, then no, they don't make mistakes like that. If it's a rabble-rouser, they can and often do."

"You seem have extensive knowledge of the Ruinous Powers."

"Save me, Verena," Duquesne muttered under his breath, and spoke up, "You cannot possibly be implying what I think you're implying. I'm a witch hunter. Of course I have knowledge of the Ruinous Powers. They're the enemy. If you want to defeat the enemy, you have to understand him."

"I can think of six dozen senior clerics across a dozen cults that would disagree with you."

"I bet I could find an equal number that would agree with me. And the ones that do? They're the ones who have actually fought the old gods, not sat in cloister their whole lives reading. Even von Kalbach has never suggested that trying to understand the enemy is sinful."

"We're digressing. Why did you survive?"

"I told you I don't know."

"Reporter, mark that question for the record. Further inquiry required. Continue, Herr Duquesne."

* * *

I awoke with a gasp, and tried to bolt upright like I'd read heroes could do. But all I felt was a massive, debilitating pain in…my entire body. After what felt like an hour recovering from that effort, I managed to roll onto my back and open my eyes. The sun was high, and the sky a bright, brilliant blue that seared my eyes. I slammed them shut and gasped for air for another few minutes before trying to flail around again.

When I did, I managed to make enough noise that someone noticed. "Oy! Father! Got a live 'un over 'ere!"

A moment later, my vision was filled by the heavily lined, clean shaven face of a Canon of Sigmar, his heavy miter shifting dangerously on his head. "My son! You live!"

I coughed for about a minute. "Obviously," I choked out.

"Levity. You'll survive," he said, his tired face breaking into a warm smile. "Stretcher!"

A moment later, I was placed, somewhat roughly I thought, onto a stretcher. "Wait, priest!" I croaked, and then coughed several more times. "Where are my men?"

"What men?"

"My chapterhouse tried to put down the riots. The last thing I remember was being thrown from my horse."

"Are you a Templar?"

"What?" I said, incredulous, and then managed to glance at my armor, which had been so heavily damaged that its Sigmarite heraldry was completely illegible. After another coughing fit, I spat, "Yes, dammit. I was in command of the Sigmarstrasse Chapterhouse. There were thirty of us. Did any survive? Konrad von Warburg? Friedrich Uhl?"

"Father Konrad is with Sigmar. I know nothing of the other."

"Fuck…" I sobbed, and passed out again

* * *

When I awoke again I was in Sisters of Mercy Hospital near the citadel. I glanced around the room, and saw that Arielle was sitting on the bedside table, with a note. I tried reaching for the note, but I was too sore. But, I counted the fact that nothing hurt as long as I didn't move as considerable progress.

After a few more tries, I managed to snatch the note. It said: _Managed to wrest this from von Kalbach's clutches, lest you fret that your precious Arielle was gone. Don't die. The girls would be devastated. -L._

I tried smiling, but it hurt too much. The noise I made must have alerted a nurse, who flipped back the curtain enclosing my bed and said, "Conscious. Progress."

"Don't push your luck," I said as I tried sitting up, which earned me another brush with unconsciousness.

"Should learn to take your own advice," the nurse said as she watched my rather pitiful display.

"Never got the knack," I said before choking on another wave of phlegm. "Who are you?"

"Nurse Runge. You, sir, are in very poor shape."

"Never mind that. Where are my men? Have they been accounted for?"

"Some, not all."

"What about Friedrich Uhl?"

"I don't know. I can find out."

"Damn it. Do it."

"You know he's probably dead, right?"

I gritted my teeth, and spat, "Find out," and turned to face the other curtain.

I stared at the curtain, and eventually fell into a restless sleep.

And suddenly, the curtain was thrown back, and I awoke. My vision was filled with the image of Nurse Runge, whose face was tight and pained looking. "I'm sorry, Templar."

I forced a few hard breaths out through my nose. "Dead?"

"I'm afraid so. I found his name in the register."

I bit my lip hard enough it bled. "Thank you," I managed. I swallowed a huge breath and asked, "Tell me about all of this," I said, gesturing feebly at the mass of bandages and splints covering my body.

"Broken collarbone, two broken shoulders, multiple pelvic fractures, every rib broken, severe damage to your internal organs, severe concussion, and a half-shattered knee."

"Lovely. When will I be out of here?"

"Three months? Maybe more? Who knows? You have a lot of recovery ahead of you."

"Unacceptable. How long have I been here?"

"A little more than one day."

"I need to get out of here tomorrow. Do what you have to do to make that happen."

"The amount of magic it would take to get you mobile by then would literally turn you and the healer into explosive sludge. So shut up and rest."

"Rested enough. Work to do."

"What work?"

"Investigation. Need to investigate what happened."

"There was a riot."

"Yes, and I guarantee no one's trying to figure out _why_ there was a riot."

"It was cultists. Who the hell knows with them?"

"Shockingly, you can find out if you look. And while I sit here, the evidence that would tell me why is degrading or being destroyed."

"Evidence? What witch hunter ever needed evidence? Just what kind of witch hunter are you?"

"My kind."

"Fine. Since I can see you're going to be obnoxious about it otherwise, I'll see what I can do. Now go to sleep," she said. She flicked her wrist in a complicated pattern, there was a brief flash of light, and I was unconscious again.

* * *

I awoke to the sound of Nurse Runge's voice, saying, "-Dr. Elsa von Seeberg is here to treat you."

"Good morning, Templar. You are not looking so well."

My eyes opened, and I was looking into the stern face of an older woman, wisps of steel-gray hair spilling out of her Shallyan headscarf. Her gray eyes were framed by a huge spiderweb of wrinkles. She appeared incapable of smiling.

"How soon will I be able to leave?"

"Soon, but not as soon as I am told you would like."

"I need to be out of here by tomorrow."

"Out of the question. You need at least three days."

"So two will be enough to get me walking, right?"

"That is not the point. If you leave prematurely, you will likely die of complications from incomplete magical healing. Even if you do not, you will be no use to your fellows."

"Do what you have to do to get me functional within two days."

"I will do what I can safely, for myself. For you, there will be great pain. And it may kill you."

"I'll risk it."

"So be it. I will try to keep you unconscious for as long as possible."

* * *

"And that," Duquesne said, "is about where my recollection ends for those two days."

"You remember nothing of the treatments used on you?" de Smedt asked

"Except the pain."

"Describe it."

"Why?"

"I want to make sure you're not trying to hide something from me."

"I was in the hospital. There were witnesses. I'm sure they kept records of my treatment."

"I've not received your records, nor had reports or testimony from anyone else on that subject as yet," the Lord High Inquisitor lied effortlessly. "And so, expound."

"Fine. Once upon a time, I got captured and tortured by Norscan reavers. Among other things, hot pokers, clubs, and such, they shoved these long, thin pieces of metal coated in a paralytic poison from Ind under my fingernails. They put them in so deep I remember the metal bumping into my first knuckle." Duquesne noted with an inward smile the way de Smedt and Ollenhauer winced, and noticed with a certain surprise that von Worlitz did not. He continued, "The pain was so extreme that, even at the time, I couldn't really feel it. I sort of drifted out of myself, and even remember staring at myself screaming. The procedures Dr. von Seeberg performed on me were less painful, but only such that I didn't get the benefit of any out-of-body experiences."

"Gods. Very well. I believe you," de Smedt said

"Thank you."

"Continue."

"Well, my first memory after that is arguing with Dr. von Seeberg-"

* * *

"Frankly, Frau-Doktor von Seeberg, I don't care. I'm leaving this hospital. Clearly, I can walk, and it doesn't even hurt much," I said, attempting to storm away before being stopped by von Seeberg's arm, which was surprisingly strong for a sixty-something woman. It couldn't have been because I was still weak. Absolutely not.

"You cannot."

"We have had this conversation, doctor. I will leave against your advice if need be. You are absolved of any responsibility for anything that might happen to me."

"Just saying it does not make it so."

"Ah, but it does," I said, flashing a smile I feared looked more pained than I had hoped. "I am serious, doctor. There is work to be done. I have spent three days in this damned hospital, and I know that with every passing moment the danger to this city grows."

"Witch hunters are so paranoid."

"Well, I should know that everything really is out to get us."

"Fine. But when you die, I'm not cleaning it up."

"You have my word, Dr. von Seeberg, that when I die, you will never learn of it. I will bid you good day, and say thank you for your able care."

I swept past her, and made my way down to the front desk, where I inquired after my clothes. Apparently, a friend of mine had dropped off a fresh set a few days ago. I changed quickly and hailed a coach. I considered visiting the friend who had dropped off the clothes, but I needed to start taking stock of the evidence as soon as possible.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, the coach dropped me off outside the Grand Chapterhouse on the Bertholdsplatz, the city's most exclusive plaza. A long rectangle, the Bertholdsplatz's north end terminated at the feet of the city's two great manors. The Duke's palace, the Greifensburg, was situated at the peak of the hill, the highest and nearly northernmost point in the city Carroburg. The even greater, though less strategically located, palace of Boris Todbringer, Kurfurst von Middenland, was situated just to southeast of Bildhofen's pile. The palace and upper-class district was enclosed by an inner wall, which, combined with the large curtain wall encircling the rest of the city, made it a formidably fortified location. The city itself, and most of its 28,000 inhabitants (and all their human waste), spilled down the south slope of the hill towards the right bank of a curve in the river Reik. The city met the river in a massive dockland, sprawling piers and warehouses fanning out on stilts into the thick, slow-moving water in all directions. Despite its size, Carroburg's port was only a shadow of its titanic cousins in Marienburg, Altdorf, and Nuln. Directly opposite the city, across the river, was another, smaller dockland. Beyond the walls, and inland from the west docks, sprawled the city's impoverished suburbs, the population of which probably rivaled the city itself, making the area Middenland's second most important population center. The Reik, the beating heart of Sigmar's Empire, was thick with barges, sailing ships, Customs cutters, and even a squat, heavy ironclad river monitor, at the confluence of the great river and one of its many tributaries, the river Bogen.

Standing on the Bertholdsplatz, deep in the palace district, one would never know the city had nearly been destroyed three days ago. It was thick with well-to-do ladies and gentlemen, their opulently embroidered and outrageously slashed sleeves and wide, lace collars threatening to swallow their bodies whole, leaving their linen jackets, doublets, and bodices to compete vainly for attention. The men wore wide-brimmed felt hats festooned with exotic feathers and cocked at improbable angles. Some of the women followed suit, but more wore equally elaborately embroidered linen caps, and most wore bodices with high and tight necklines, though some of the younger women wore bodices with scandalously low necklines. Many of the men, mostly older, covered their legs completely with hose, but the younger and middle-aged men had switched to breeches.

The city's wealthy flitted between coffee shops, tea houses, taverns, inns, theaters, booksellers and print-houses and even one or two of the new, so-called 'restaurants' aimlessly. They ate, drank, read, gossiped, and fucked each other like animals as though there weren't bloodthirsty cultists in their midst. Most of them probably even believed it, and would continue to believe it right up until a some lunatic cut out their hearts and fed their souls to daemons. I knew it was an unfair characterization of an entire group of people, having met many rich men and women who were also stern and undeluded foes of Chaos, but I was in significantly more pain now that I had been when I left the hospital and so disinclined to nuance or charity. In my blackening mood, I considered the good cheer evident on the Bertholdsplatz a poor omen for the reception my intention to investigate would receive in the Chapterhouse.

Of course, I hoped to drop in, get what I needed to start, and be gone before von Kalbach knew I was there, but that wasn't a very realistic goal. Von Kalbach may not have been a good detective, and not always a very good enemy of Chaos, but he was alert.

As I approached the Chapterhouse, I diverted from the front entrance, which I saw was crowded with young Templars trying to look tough and pure by casting suspicious stares out at the Bertholdsplatz, as if they wouldn't join them as soon as their shifts ended. Most witch hunters are drawn from the lower nobility, the class most naturally inclined to repulsive debauchery. Being born a member of that same class, and having personally engaged in a good deal of repulsive debauchery myself, I know whereof I speak.

I managed to slip into the servant's entrance, silencing a few cooks and porters with stares and a flash of the heraldry embroidered on my jerkin. I quickly ended up in the main hall of the Grand Chapterhouse, which had desks and other work spaces for about a hundred Templars. I scanned the desks for documents relating the riots. It took a few minutes, but I found one desk piled high with documents, though they were neatly stacked in their files. Apparently no one had gone through them, which I judged typical of Carroburg's witch hunters. I began glancing through their first few pages. Most of the files consisted of what looked like meaningless busy work that had yielded no real evidence. Of course, I'd have to go through them carefully later to make sure I was right, but for now I had a very specific goal in mind.

Unfortunately, I was only about half way through skimming the files when a voice behind me barked, "Duquesne!" Naturally, von Kalbach had found me.

I stood, rather stiffly and painfully, faced the Paladin of Carroburg and came to rather creaky attention. The Paladin was only about an inch taller than me, but was probably at least a foot broader. He was a massive man, with closely-cropped iron-gray hair and intense blue eyes. His face was meticulously shaven, probably the better to display his fearsome collection of scars. Around the middle he had a slight paunch, but underneath were obviously thick layers of muscle. His dress was Spartan and functional, eschewing the more outrageous styles seen outside. Underneath his jerkin, similar to mine, I could see he was wearing a light shirt of mail. Behind him, leaning against his desk on its raised dais, was the massive two-handed sword which he always carried when out of the chapterhouse, eschewing the firearms favored by most Templars. It was a huge and unwieldly weapon, but (and I knew this from having fought by his side before) von Kalbach was a man of surprising speed and lethal grace, especially for someone who looked like little more than a bruiser.

"Junior Templar, First Grade Erich Duquesne reporting for duty, sir."

"Duty? Are you joking? You can barely stand."

"Give it a minute, sir."

Von Kalbach sighed, "What the hell are you doing here, man? I spoke to the Canoness of Medicine at Mercy. You were supposed to be out for months. I filed paperwork to that effect. You're on medical leave."

"I have no doubt, sir, and you don't have to officially take me off medical leave."

"Oh, now that I have your permission-"

"Sarcasm. You're improving, sir."

"Shut up. Now, out with it, what are you doing here?"

"I want to investigate the riot."

"Out of the question."

"Why?"

"First, there's no point. The taint has been purged. After the Duke and I put down the riot, we executed the survivors and thoroughly cleansed the city." _Translation_ , I thought, _we murdered a few hundred now-homeless people_. I couldn't decide what irked me more, the laziness, the injustice, or the lack of professionalism from men who should have known better. "Second," he continued, "if word got out we were investigating after the cleansing, it would inspire another panic. You know the press. Third, we don't have the resources. Most of our manpower is engaged in the rebuilding, specifically the warding of new construction."

"I accept all of that, sir, and you may even be right. But this is my job. I really, really want to do my job. There's a reason the Church trained me to do this work and assigned me here. There's a reason the Church continues to train investigators as fast as they can be recruited. Detection is not a flight of fancy. You have your skills, sir, and I have mine. I think they complement each other."

"That's a good speech, Erich. But I think you're full of shit."

"Am I?"

"First, I know you hate me for standing in the way of your precious detection-"

I tried to interrupt, but von Kalbach held up a hand, "Ah! And I don't like you much either. I think you're soft and yes, I don't think your methods contribute much. Second, I know you want to punish the people who killed your friends. My condolences, by the way."

"That's part of it, yes."

"I promise they have already been punished."

"Maybe. I want to make sure."

Von Kalbach heaved another sigh, "If I don't let you do this, you're going to do it on your own. Right?"

I shrugged.

"Asshole. Fine. You can investigate. But I'm giving you a partner."

"You mean a spy."

"Yes."

"Fuck," I snarled, but without real heat. I knew that I wasn't going to escape this condition.

"Fuck," the Paladin agreed, almost amiably

"Who?"

"Vandenberg! Front and center."

Upon hearing the name, I muttered under my breath, "Cannot be serious. Not this guy."

Junior Templar, Third Class Jochen Vandenberg practically sprinted to attention before the Paladin. He was young, no older than 19, and ridiculously chipper. I hated him, possibly because he might have reminded me a little of myself when I was that age. Maybe.

He had bright blond hair, ludicrous blue eyes, and cheekbones so high and sharp you'd probably lose your hand if you slapped his idiot face. He was at least four inches taller than me and slender, but acceptably muscled. Unlike most witch hunters, he was given to vanity and wore a rather impractical-looking version of a hunter's uniform. It was finely tailored, but it appeared to lack most of the defensive features a real hunter's clothing would boast. For instance, my overcoat was not only reinforced with steel brigandines but the leather was also woven with powerful warding and banishing spells. My jerkin was similarly fortified. What leather Vandenberg's outfit did have looked a little forlorn next to the extravagant lace collar and shredded, puffy sleeves.

"I trust you know young Herr Vandenberg, Duquesne?"

"We've had the pleasure," I said through slightly gritted teeth, extending my hand, which was strongly shaken.

"Herr Duquesne is a most novel witch hunter, wouldn't you agree, sir?" the young man said, oblivious.

"Yes, the wave of the future, truly," von Kalbach said, visibly suppressing an irritating grin, for which I thanked the Lady. It wasn't impossible that, if he actually smiled, his face would literally shatter. And even if it didn't, the sight of that man smiling would have given me nightmares worse than the most depraved Daemonette.

"Well, as much as this conversation doesn't make me want to choke to death on my own vomit, shall we, Vandenberg?"

"Lead the way, sir."

I smartly spun back to von Kalbach, and then regretted it as my gut was suddenly stabbed with pain, jerked my head and said, "Paladin," and then left to go.

"Duquesne," von Kalbach said to my back.

* * *

Title note: Title translates as 'Pain Don't Hurt,' which, yes, is a reference to the Patrick Swayze movie, among other things.

'Lore' note: On the demographics of Carroburg, I know that official Games Workshop materials say that Carroburg's population is 8,000. This is simply not enough for my purposes, and a little unrealistic, I think (though I could be wrong; demographic records from the real-life 17th century Europe are scanty at best). Hence the increase to 28,000, plus an additional dock across the river (which would be in Reikland, by the way) and suburbs all around.


	3. III: ALL WE NEED ARE THEIR HEADS

Once we were safely outside the chapterhouse, I turned to Vandenberg and said, "Okay, Yolk-"

"Yolk?"

"That's what I'm going to call you, because you remind me of an egg yolk," eliciting a forced chuckle from the boy. "So tell me, what's our first step?"

"I have no idea. I have no idea what we're supposed to even be doing."

"We're investigating the cause of the riot. We're going to find out who started it and make sure they burn. Then, we're going to make sure it doesn't happen again. So: first step?"

"Why are you asking me? Clearly you already know."

"Because you're going to learn how to investigate, even if it kills you."

"Go to the plaza where you were almost killed?"

"No. The first thing we need to do is get an accurate picture of who died. I'm sure the corpses have all been burnt by now, but there should be a record of the dead, in the archives."

"The archives? Seriously? They are no place for a witch hunter."

"They are exactly the place for a witch hunter, when the situation calls for it. Now come!"

We strode off into the square, pushing our way rudely through the crowd. Within minutes, we were at the gate of the Greifensburg, the Gryphon's Roost, the home of Leopold von Bildhofen, 69th Prince and Duke of Carroburg, and the home of his archives. We presented our credentials to the doorman, and were whisked away to the top of the citadel. Fortunately for my weakened condition, the modernized castle boasted an elevator. Duke von Bildhofen was wise, I mused, as servants cranked the pulleys that moved the box. Most lords and cities and even universities put their archives in the basements, or converted dungeons, where they would fall prey to the depredations of damp and cold and rats and mice.

Herzog von Bildhofen's archives occupied a long room on the top floor, taking up the south wall of the citadel. The doorman left us at the entrance, and Yolk hauled on the heavy door, allowing me access. Inside was a small man with a wispy beard, one milky eye, and spectacles. He looked ancient, but I suspected he was actually younger than me. "Good morrow, mein Herr," I said to the librarian, jovially. "My name is Erich Duquesne, and this is my associate, Yolk," at the mention of the nickname, the younger Templar grimaced. "We need to access any records you have kept regarding the recent riots, including any personal property taken from the dead, which I am told has been stored here pending condemnation by the courts. May we have your name?"

"I am Chronicler, Second Class Kurt Diebner," he said in a rather reedy voice. "You may of course access whatever you wish, and I will be happy to show you to the location of the records you seek. However, I must warn you that they may be less complete than you are hoping."

"Well, that's no surprise. Recordkeeping after incidents like this is always sloppy."

"That's not what I mean, sir. I mean that other witch hunters have been into the archives, and I am afraid they have taken some items. For what purpose, I do not know, but none have been returned."

I felt anger prickling under my collar. "Corruption," I growled. "I understand that you could not have stopped them. But I do not suppose you kept any kind of record of them? Did they give their names?"

"Some did. I discreetly made a note of those. Some did not. But I attempted to commit their faces to memory, and have made some sketches."

"Well done, man. Very well done. I will see to it that a letter of commendation is placed in your file. Provide my associate with those sketches and a copy of the names."

"What?" Yolk asked

"I know you're not eager to do this work with me, so you can do a different job. Take this information and find these men. Find out what they did with the property, and get it back. If it's been sold, confiscate the money, and confiscate the item from the merchant."

"So you want me to go make an enemy of the whole citywide chapter?"

"No. I don't _want_ you to. But I _am_ giving you an order. If it helps, you can tell them it was my order, which happens to be the truth." I thrust a finger into his perfect face. "But if I find out you went easy on any friends, or took any bribes to look the other way, and," I snapped by thumb and middle finger loudly, "rest assured that I _will_ find out, you will hear of it."

"Aye, Junior Templar, First Class," he said, coming to rigid attention.

I ignored him, and turned back to Diebner. "One other question. And think very hard about the answer to this question, for your life may hang in the balance. Did any of them take any chaotic or tainted items?"

Diebner shuddered, and hesitated. Finally, he said, "I do not know."

"You best hope they did not. If any have, it will be difficult to keep you from burning."

"Why?!" he nearly wailed. "If they did, I was not involved!"

"Alas, we have only your word on that. If you have any references who could testify or swear out affidavits as to your purity and honesty, it would be wise to arrange that. And, if it comes to it, I will be sure to emphasize the fact that you risked your own personal safety to record the identities of the thieves."

Diebner deflated, as though one outburst had exhausted him, "Thank you, Herr Hexenjäger."

I turned back to Yolk, and said, "Templar Vandenberg. If you discover that anyone has taken or received tainted artifacts originating from this archive, burn them. Regardless of their station."

Vandenberg clearly considered commenting on this possibility, but visibly reconsidered and simply barked smartly, "Zu befehl, mein Herr."

"Dismissed." Vandenberg clicked his heels together, and departed in a swirl of overcoat.

"Now, Diebner, take me-"

* * *

"Why did you dismiss Vandenberg?" de Smedt asked

"I just told you."

"You thought he'd enjoy your other job more?"

"No, but it needed to be done and I knew he was going to be difficult about searching the archives, so I decided to use him where I thought his talents lay."

"Forgive me this, Herr Duquesne, but how do we know you didn't dismiss him so you could secret tainted artifacts, or destroy evidence on behalf of cultists?" There was a slight intake of breath around the room. Not from Duquesne, who had been waiting for this shoe to drop.

"I see our true colors are at last fluttering in the breeze."

"Call it whatever you like, Duquesne. Answer the question," de Smedt snapped, an ugly scowl on his face.

"No."

"No?!"

"No. Because I'm fairly certain that whatever answer I give to that question will be used to incriminate me. I've done this myself, you know. So I will simply say this: I did not then and never have offered aid, comfort, or succor to enemies of the Empire or humanity, including, but not limited to, the Ruinous Powers of the Immaterium, commonly known as Khorne, Tzeentch, Slaanesh, and Nurgle. I have never participated in any of their schemes or conspiracies, and have never acted in their interests of my own initiative."

"Very good, Herr Duquesne-"

"But not enough? Just do it already. You know you want to. Just get it over with."

"Very well," de Smedt said, turning to one of his clerks, "Fetch Herr von Hochschildt, please."

"Mind reading freak."

"What will he find in your mind, Herr Duquesne?" de Smedt asked, looking smug. _Prick_ , Duquesne thought.

"I have no idea."

"Really? How is that?"

"Are you aware of everything your mind contains? Do you have complete knowledge of yourself? Of course not. I have read the philosophers who say that the adult mind is a sky-high pile of memories, impulses, delusions and minutiae, only some random proportion of it knowable to us in our waking states. So I have no way of knowing whether the freak will pull something out of my brain that I never actually did but merely thought about or which I've forgotten about or buried that nonetheless incriminates me."

"Is that all?"

"No. I don't trust him. I think he lies about what he finds in men's minds."

"Quite an accusation. I don't suppose you can back it up."

"I can. I can think of at least four occasions where a man or woman burned because of the freak's testimony, even though I had evidence contradicting him."

"You never considered that your evidence might be wrong?"

"Of course I did. But what goes on in someone's mind is fundamentally proof of nothing. The things that the freak found in those minds might have been idle fantasy or musings, not reflective of what actually happened. And I had documents, physical evidence and statements from witnesses that directly contradicted the things he said he saw."

"Well, as you just said, no one can truly know what is in their minds. How do you know he didn't see it?"

"I have no doubt that he saw the things he saw, in one way or another. I am not saying that he made those things up out of whole cloth. I'm saying that when he read those minds, he knew what he was expected to find, and he found it. The lie was to himself, at the beginning. Everything afterward just confirms it."

"An impressive level of thought, Duquesne. But it won't protect you from his reading."

"Oh, I have no doubt he'll relish it."

"Why is that?"

"This one, I know you know."

"Of course I know you had his brother burned for witchcraft while you were both in Middenheim. Incidentally, I read those reports, and I agree with you, though I don't share your suspicion of the survivor. Did von Hochschildt follow you here, by chance?"

"Obviously, though I can't prove it, which doesn't surprise me. So then that begs the question: how sure are you of his purity?"

"Sure enough."

"Or maybe you're just that determined to carry out your orders."

"You chastise me for talking around what I mean. I say you should do the same. No one is being framed here, Herr Duquesne."

"Maybe not by you. What about the freak? How do you know he won't frame me?"

"It's a chance I'm willing to take," de Smedt said, with the barest indication of a smile.

"That's not funny."

"It's a little funny," de Smedt said with a disconcerting grin, that made Duquesne reconsider leaning into the inquisitor's 'joke.'

A few moments passed in an increasingly uncomfortable silence until Gerhard von Hoschshildt, Prelate of the Grey College, a master of the Lore of Shadows glided silently into the interrogation room. He wore a massive grey cloak. His arms and hands were hidden in his sleeves, and his face was invisible under a heavy hood. The cloak was luxuriously trimmed in the fur of grey wolves. Other than the robe, there was only one thing visible: on a heavy chain around his neck hung the Sword of Judgment, a reminder of the heavy burden borne by Grey wizards: the burden of action. For them, to know is not enough.

The man moved silently across the floor, and inaudibly pulled out a chair. With a slight rustle of fabric, he settled in. He did not raise his head or look at anyone. "You summoned me, my Lord High Inquisitor?" His voice seemed to come from every direction and no direction at once. Certainly not from inside his hood. Duquesne shuddered, the palpable air of magic around the man inspiring both revulsion and distrust.

Even de Smedt didn't look entirely pleased. "Yes, Herr von Hoschildt. This witness has been less than forthcoming with the tribunal, and we would ask for your assistance."

"Of course," he said, and his hood dropped a fraction of an inch.

* * *

When he invaded my mind, there was no dramatic flash of light. He didn't extend his hand. He didn't babble out an incantation. One second I was staring at his creepy hood, and the next everything was dark, and I felt a searing pain in the center of my brain. Suddenly, I was aware of tendrils of grey smoke worming their way into the crevices of my brain. I lashed out at them, destroying them. Suddenly, in my mind's eye, the wispy grey shadows condensed into a vaguely humanoid shape. The thing said "Don't fight it. You might not survive."

I gritted my mental teeth and grunted, "Fuck out of my head, freak."

"What are you trying to achieve, here? This my world, not yours. I could crush you instantly-"

"Then do it! Godsdammit, just do it! You've been wanting to all these years. And I'm already tired of this fucking charade."

The shadows pulsed, sensing my defenses weakening. They burrowed back into me, further than before. They burrowed, burrowed, burrowed, seeking, seeking, seeking. The pain grew with each second, to the point where it felt like my brain felt as though there were a whole other person inside it, because there was. And then I struck. Lashing out, I hacked at the roots of the tendrils, their connection to the world outside my brain. I felt them retreating, and I redoubled my efforts, severing one after another. A few escaped, but not enough, or so I hoped. "Got you, fucker," I said.

If I was right, von Hochschildt's consciousness was trapped inside my brain, and he'd hear me. If I was wrong, he'd kill me. He might kill me anyway, but now he was practically cut in half, and I had the advantage.

"Very clever," a raspy voice said. "You're strong. How did you know how to that?"

"Before I burned him, your brother told me how. He _hated_ you. And me, but you more."

" _You'll_ burn in the end, too, murderer."

"Finally, some life out of the wet blanket. I never condemned an innocent, not once. You, on the other hand, have. So you're going to suffer a bit before I let you out. And when I do, you're going to stay out of my head or I swear my last fucking act will be cracking yours open on the table, magic, guards, and Lords High Inquisitor be damned."

Von Hochshildt's silence was deafening.

"We can do it that way. Tell me, freak, how does it feel to be cut in half? Is it fun? Comfortable?" I asked, punctuating each statement with another attack on the part of Hochschildt stranded in my brain. The freak groaned and wheezed satisfyingly. "Because it's nothing compared to what you did to those 'heretics,' to their families. Remember that."

Finally, von Hochschildt let out a wheezy chuckle, and said "You don't fool me, Duquesne. Even now, I _know_ your mind. You don't care about some dead or tortured peasants. Who's the real freak?"

"You may know my mind, freak, but I'm going to make sure you don't remember," I said, and redoubled my attacks.

* * *

When I released him, I had no idea how long had passed since von Hochschildt's inquisition had begun. But as soon as I did, I felt a huge weight lifted from my mind, and I blinked furiously, my sight returning slowly. I was staring up at the ceiling, having fallen off my chair. I levered myself back up, and was rewarded with another nail in my head. I pushed through it and managed to haul myself into my chair. I stared at de Smedt. He stared back.

"What is the meaning of this?" he asked, his voice oddly choked.

"Herr von Hochschildt," I said, through a choking cough that might also have been a laugh, "isn't as good at his job as he's led you to believe."

"Restrain him," de Smedt said, and the door guards marched into the room. They grabbed me under my shoulders, hauling me briefly to my feet before slamming me back down onto my knees, and cracking my head onto the cold stone floor. I screamed, and unconsciousness pulsed invitingly at my temples. I considered succumbing for a long moment, and then pushed back.

It was then that I heard von Hochschildt speak, in that same tortured wheeze I had heard in my mind. He was saying, "-cannot say for certain that this man is guilty of any crime at this time. However, his mental defenses are much stronger than I have encountered, other than other magic users or high-level cultists. Further, if Herr Duquesne had nothing to hide, he would not have defended himself."

I considered trying to rise, but thought better of it when I realized the guards would crack my head on the floor again, which would certainly lead to unconsciousness this time. I heard de Smedt saying, "In that case, I must adjourn this deposition to confer-"

From the floor, I managed to interrupt, saying, "My Lord High Inquisitor, if I may be heard in my defense?"

"Don't let him speak, my Lord. We have no idea of what he's capable," von Hochschildt said.

"If he's capable of killing with words, he's been able to do so since the deposition begun. He hasn't-"

"Forgive me, my Lord, but that is only as far as you know, and you are not a wizard. If he can kill with a word, he can also influence your minds with the same. And no, you would not have noticed the change."

"In that case, examine the deponent and the others in this room. If they have been bewitched, we will have the deponent's head this instant," de Smedt. He turned to the guards, "In the meantime, put him in a chair. But restrain his hands and gag him."

I submitted to de Smedt's new measures, while von Hochschildt became completely motionless. The hairs on my arms prickled as waves of slight magical energy emanated from the Gray Wizard.

After a few minutes, de Smedt became impatient and demanded, "Well, man? Is there witchcraft in this room?"

Von Hochschildt didn't move, but still managed to look hesitant, "Not at this time, my Lord."

"Well, then, I see no harm in letting the deponent speak. Ungag him, but keep him restrained."

"Thank you, my Lord. And, with respect, Herr von Hochschildt is full of shit. I am trained to defend myself from intrusions into my mind, which I believe is standard for witch hunters. And if I am stronger than most witch hunters, then it is because I am smarter than most witch hunters. I explained why I cannot trust Herr von Hochschildt. I defended myself because of our history, and his general untrustworthiness, not because I have anything to hide. Moreover, I am entitled to defend myself, whether against Herr von Hochschildt's intrusions or from the charges alleged by yourself. And I could have killed Herr von Hochschildt while defending myself. I did not. Last, I have already said that I have nothing to do with any of the Ruinous Powers."

"And at this point, Herr Duquesne, we have only your word on the last point. You have adduced no proof to that effect."

"I am not the proponent, my Lord de Smedt. You say I am a traitor to humanity and league with the most despicable forces imaginable. If my conduct as a witch hunter has not always been exemplary, I am reasonably certain it has never been criminal in the least. It is therefore _your_ burden to prove that _I_ am guilty."

"There is reason in your words. But that is not the law, and you know it. I can cite dozens of statutes and opinions placing the burden squarely on the accused."

"They are not just."

"That is irrelevant. They are the law. And we will comply with the law, and to its fullest extent. You, who have claimed that your superiors have violated the law in prosecuting heretics and mutants, cannot possibly object to compliance with the law."

"Their justice is relevant. We cannot become just unless we do just acts. If there is reason in my assertion, it must be acted upon, lest its reason go unheeded. We cannot simply say that it is reasonable and then ignore it, or say that it is academic or a matter for a different tribunal. It is before you today."

"Oh, but I can, and it is not. This is a deposition, not a trial. Matters of justice are not our concern. Our concern is to perform the necessary inquisition to discover the truth of what has happened in this accursed city."

"And what happens when the truth must take action?"

"Then, I trust that you will be there to advocate for yourself and whomever else you choose."

"Will you guarantee that I will have that opportunity?"

"I will," de Smedt said quickly. I didn't smile, but my eyes must have glinted, because a horrified look passed across the faces of the commission and the wizard. De Smedt grimaced, and said over his shoulder, "Off the record."

He turned back to me and said, "Very clever. But you must know that if I am as unprincipled as you think, I can easily have that guarantee removed from the record."

"You won't."

"How do you know?"

"I don't really. But you do have principles, or else you wouldn't have discussed justice at all. And regardless, my Lord, at this point, it is your business. Not mine."

De Smedt's eyes narrowed, and he pursed and relaxed his lips a few times. He turned back to the reporters, and said, "Back on the record. Mark this area of questioning for follow up. Herr Duquesne, please continue."

"I was talking to Diebner about his records, and…"

* * *

Title note: The title is reference to the work of my favorite science fiction author, John Scalzi, among other things.


	4. IV: THE GULL AND NOOSE

2/13/17: Edited lore note.

* * *

"Are these all the records you have?" I said, paging through a rather short folio Diebner had given me.

"I'm afraid so, Herr Duquesne."

"There can't be more than 1,000 names here. Granted, I was unconscious for most of the uprising, but the dead must number at least three times that."

"As you say, my lord. I was here. I assure you, we have used every diligence in preparing this list. A lot of bodies were burned, and people are still filtering in to report the dead."

"They had better, by the Lady. If they don't, they're going suffer when tax time comes. You will keep me informed of this, of course."

"Yes, my lord. On what basis?"

"Every hundred names, send out a messenger."

"Yes, my lord."

"I see you've placed certain marks next to certain names. What do they mean?"

"It's a cross-reference to the recovered property."

"Excellent. I assume it's too much to hope that you've conclusively identified the owners of any Chaotic or tainted artifacts?"

"Conclusively? No. But we have tentatively identified certain possessors of tainted artifacts. Those people have a purple mark next to their names."

"Good. And I don't suppose any of these people or their families are still alive?"

"I doubt it, lord."

"Do you keep execution records here, too?"

"We keep copies of some records, mostly notable people. The full records would be at the Grand Chapterhouse."

I rolled my eyes. "Of course they are."

"Is that a problem?"

I sighed briefly, "No. Can you get me a copy of your records?"

"Right here," Diebner said, digging for a few moments in a stack of folios.

It was only one page, with six names. Gustaf von Trotta, a Knight of the Empire. Bernd Schiller, a deacon of Sigmar's church. Paul Gerhardt, a prominent merchant. Karl Siegel, a poet. Martin von Wilpert, Freiherr Mittelmeer, and his wife Aleksandra.

"What about their families?"

"I think most of them are still alive, though I doubt they're enjoying imprisonment and inquisition. Generally, these people were too important for their families to be executed on the spot. I suspect they have attorneys," Diebner said, wincing.

"Good. Who's handling the inquisition at Schiller's church?"

"Hellinger, I believe."

"Well, that's something." Albert Hellinger was a competent officer and was even capable of reasoning. "I assume that Gerhardt's inventory was seized?"

"Yes, it's under impound in his warehouse."

"Do you have an address?"

"Yes," he said, and indicated the folio, "If I may?" he asked. I handed him the page, and he produced a fountain pen from somewhere in his robe, and bent over to scribble the warehouse's address below the list.

"Thanks. I know where the rest of these people lurked," I said, tucking the page into my brigandine coat. "Here's what I need: I need you to create a separate list with all the names and addresses of everyone tentatively identified as the owner of a Chaotic artifact, plus a short description of the item, two copies. I need another copy of the list of high-profile traitors as well, plus identifying information. Then, I need you to make two copies of the full list of names. Send one to the Municipal Archive, assuming it didn't burn down, and have the archivists get me addresses on all 1,000 or so of them. There's a tavern on the Platz, the Gull and Noose. I'm going there for breakfast. Bring me the second copy of the full list and the other documents there. Also, have the archivists send their work there."

"Yes, my lord. But it does seem like rather a lot of work, doesn't it?"

"In my business, there are no shortcuts."

"As you say, my lord."

* * *

A few minutes later, I was walking out of the Greifensburg. The Gull and Noose was quite nearby, but the walk was harder than I expected. As I walked, my magical healing protested, and I suffered random shooting pains all over my body, though nothing stopped working, and I wasn't bleeding, as far as I could tell. I gritted my teeth through the pain, and ignored it.

When I walked through the Gull's swinging doors, I was hit by a blast of hot, moist air. The Gull was a contradiction. It sat hardly a kilometer from the Todbringer and Bildhofen palaces, but it was a firmly middle-class establishment, not like the palatial establishments crowding the Duke's plaza. I suspected that its location had something to do with it. The Gull was tucked into what was perhaps the only cranny left in the palace district, a corner of road sandwiched between a high-end butcher shop and a notary. It had a very small and nondescript façade, though it was much larger inside than it appeared to be, and it did not betray itself as a tavern. Even its sign, a gull with wings spread and a noose thrown loosely about its neck, had no words on it. I also suspected that its clientele had something to do with its survival. The Gull was mainly frequented by managerial functionaries in the service of the various great houses that perched on the hill, and I supposed that those magnates thought it convenient for their important servants to have somewhere to drink within summoning distance.

The Gull was not overly busy when I arrived, it being an off hour, for which I was grateful. As genteel as the clientele could be, they were often overly obsequious and polite, and always wanted to bend your ear to some subject or another. The combination quickly grated on the nerves, or at least my nerves.

I sat down at a table with a sigh that I hoped wasn't too noticeable and waited a moment for the girl, who bustled up with a menu. "Could you send Hansie over, dear?" I asked her, and she smiled. As she left, I said to her back, "Lager, too, if you please." She turned her head to acknowledge my order, and kept walking.

I browsed the menu for a few seconds. It was not extensive, but the fare was good. I was just about to decide, when Hans Bloch, the appropriately-named proprietor of the Gull, sat down across from me, the bench creaking slightly under his huge bulk, made bulkier by his thick leather apron. He carried two tankards of lager, one of which he set down in front of me. "Erich! Good to see you again. Been a while. I was starting to worry," he said, extending his hand across the table, which I shook.

"Your fears were not unfounded, my friend. I took a wound or two in the uprising," I said, groaning slightly and taking a swig of the lager. I'd have preferred wine, but it was better than nothing.

"Are you going to die in my pub? Don't die in my pub. Customers don't like it."

"I'm not going to die, at least not until the job is done. Then I'll give it some thought. Listen, Hansie," I said, lowering my voice a little. "I'm going to tell you something that I need not to enter the rumor mill. Understand?"

"I do," Hans said. Like most successful tavern owners, Bloch was a rumormonger _par excellence_ , but was one of the few worth trusting to keep his mouth shut when asked, and a damn good conduit for dis- and misinformation.

"I'm not sure the taint has been expunged," I said, suppressing a grimace as pain shot through my chest.

Bloch took a moment to process this. "Okay, so does that mean you're doing your thing?"

"It does, and I need help. Kalbach's not giving me much rope on this one, and my only support is a partner who is not only utterly inexperienced but also a spy."

"Where is he?"

"I sent him off on an errand that should take a while."

* * *

At this point, Duquesne omitted the rest of that comment to Bloch, which went something like, "And cause a nice little ruckus that should distract some people whose attention I'd rather avoid."

* * *

"Cute," Bloch said, and grew suddenly somber. "I heard about what happened to your people. I'm sorry about Fritz. You okay?"

My lips tightened. "I'm fine."

"You don't seem very fine. I saw you come in. You can barely walk, and you've been gritting your teeth since I sat down."

"That's pain, which you know is an old friend of mine."

"Don't give me shit. Fritz was your best friend."

Personally, I thought 'best friend' was a bit of an overstatement. Fritz was _the_ man you wanted watching your back, and we'd watched each other's for a couple of decades. Didn't mean we were particularly close. Or so it had seemed. "Yeah, and he's dead and I don't really want to talk about it."

"Fair," Bloch said, raising his hands placatingly.

"Anyway, I'm going to make sure that they all get their due. Fritz, the murdered innocents and the guilty living. All of them."

"You always do."

I grimaced again, this time not from pain. "Not always."

"So, where's Lenz?" Bloch asked, his face relaxing as he changed the subject. "He's usually hanging around on these sorts of shady jobs."

"Lenz, I presume, is at his office sucking his clients' blood, as usual. I'm going round his house after end of business."

"You really shouldn't pull him into these things. He's got a profession and a family."

"That's his problem, not mine. And Lenz is an adult. He can do what he wants."

Bloch gave me a skeptical look, "Lenz would follow you anywhere."

"And I have not the first clue why," which was a pointless but reflexive lie. I considered trailing off, but decided to double down, "Am I particularly charismatic? If so, I'd really like to know because I seem to have been unable to make any friends in this damned empire except him and, maybe, you. Quite the reverse, in fact. I've made more enemies than I'm used to having without a mercenary company at my back."

"Oh, poor you. And you know that's not what I'm talking about."

"You make it seem like my saving him from the pyre with a ream of exonerating evidence and a dozen witnesses was a bad thing. If he wants to be grateful, I'm not going to get in his way. And I love his kids like they were my own. I'd never let anything happen to their papa."

Bloch's expression didn't change. "Oh, fuck off," I said, finally, exasperated. "I'm not abusing his gratitude."

"If you say so," Bloch said. Before I could object further, he continued, "So what did you need my help with?"

"I'm investigating the taint. I think the cult still exists, and you've got the best rumors in the city."

"Do you have a theory?"

"I just started on this case a few hours ago. Any kind of theorizing would be baseless speculation, but I will tell you that my first instinct was that the cult launched the uprising because someone got too close to discovering them, and couldn't be dealt with before revealing it. That uprising, while loud and scary, fizzled in the Guntherplatz, a mile from the inner gate. Nowhere near success. It was a poorly planned and poorly executed botch. But now, after a day or so of repression, everyone thinks the cult's dead."

"Risky."

"Damned risky, no doubt. And, as I said, that was just my first instinct. So: do you know anything that would tend to corroborate that?"

"Well, the chatter definitely increased in the days before the riot."

"I remember you mentioned that. I was skeptical it because there weren't any other warning signs."

"And I agreed with you. I'll look through my notes. See if I can turn up some names. You should eat. On the house," Bloch said, rising.

"Yeah, and how much are you going to gouge me for the information?"

"Depends how good it is."

I chuckled under my breath, and gave my order to the serving girl. A few minutes later, my breakfast came and I set to eating.

After about half an hour, Bloch reemerged from his office. His expression, as usual, was unreadable. Bloch was a dangerous card player, and didn't even have to cheat like I usually did.

"Sho?" I asked, around a mouthful of egg. "Anyfing?"

Bloch hesitated for a second, which wasn't like him. I swallowed and sat up, and asked, "Well, out with it, man."

"The day before the uprising, a big shipment came into the docks for a Paul Gerhard. You know him?"

"I know of him, and he's actually one of my suspects. Go on."

"It wasn't a low-profile thing. Everyone knew about Gerhard's shipment, goods from Ind and Cathay that everyone was eager to get rich off. Spice, silk, ivory, textiles, curved swords, some kind of magical iron, all kinds of stuff."

"It was cover?"

"Possibly. For what, I don't know."

"What makes you think it was cover?"

"Obviously, the shipment came in on a barge, but it came off the _Le Esprit_ ," pronouncing it as eh-sprit, which made me wince, "which calls itself a Bretonnian, but it's is probably Tilean. No matter, it has ties to Sartosan pirates. The rumor was that _Le Esprit_ had taken on extra cargo in Sartosa on its way to Marienburg."

"That's a pretty big detour for a ship bringing perishables from half the world away."

"And Sartosa may not be ruled by Norscans anymore, but that place is a rathive of traitors and mutants."

"That's still thin as hell, Hans."

"But why go to Sartosa? Sartosa doesn't make trade goods. It makes pirates."

"It's changed a lot over the last twenty years. And it's a big transshipment point in its own right, including for goods from Araby. Any Arabyan goods in the shipment?"

"Not that I know of."

"Any non-Indian or Cathayan goods?"

"Probably."

"Doesn't change the fact that we don't know for sure it went to Sartosa. And you're forgetting that contraband could have made its way onto the barge in Marienburg. Much closer to Norsca and the Wastes. Which doesn't help us, because we can't prove it."

"So then what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to investigate. Anything else?"

"Yeah. People were surprised at how quickly the barge was offloaded, I recall. And, when the offloading was finished, the barge didn't float like it was empty. Also, no one got a good look inside the barge. Gerhard used all his own people, and bunch of cranes built on the spot."

"So you're saying that the contraband might have been a large cargo?"

"Maybe."

"All of that could be explained by ordinary smuggling, hoping to avoid customs and taxes."

"Oh, I'm sure he is a smuggler. Aren't all merchants? But isn't that a great excuse? 'Oh, my lord, those tainted items aren't mine. I'm an honest smuggler. Obviously, one of my people is the culprit, who used my smuggling to sneak in traitorous cargo.'"

"It's a nice tale, but not evidence."

"Maybe, but any other witch hunter would be building the pyre by now."

"We've had this exact discussion before. And, anyway, Gerhard already burned."

"Well, stop poking holes my work then. You only come to me for leads, anyway."

"That is true. Where did the barge go after the offloading?"

"Probably out of the city, to Marienburg."

"Damn. What I wouldn't give to be a wizard. Could just pop over to Marienburg in the blink of an eye."

"I don't think that's how magic works."

"Nobody knows how magic works. That's the definition of magic."

Bloch chuckled. He had always found my university degree and philosophical inclination faintly ridiculous, a sentiment broadly shared among the lower classes of the Empire. In his case, though, it was probably more of a guise than a genuine belief. His vocabulary seemed more limited than mine, but he always understood me. The obvious conclusion, then, was that Bloch was a sandbagging prick. Normally, that would have worried me. But Bloch was on my side, or at least it seemed like he was. "Anyway," he said, "you don't need to. I have friends in other cities. They could poke around."

"And how much is that going to cost me?"

"I'll itemize it for you. How does that sound?" Bloch said, dripping sarcasm, and letting slip one of those big words he wasn't supposed to know.

"You'd better. Anything else you found back there?"

"A few scraps, maybe a few good-looking ones, but they're even thinner than what I just gave you. I need to follow up."

"That's fine. I'm going to have my hands full with the barge and my initial list of suspects anyway. Let's talk price."

"Sounds like you need a _lot_ of help. So I'll make it easy, if not cheap. Give me a Hammer, and at the end I'll pay you back whatever I don't earn or pay out. And you can eat here free for life."

My mouth dropped open, and I stared silently at Bloch for ten whole seconds. "Oh, free, he says," I said, mocking Bloch openly. "Be serious! A Hammer? Where in the hell am I going to get that kind of cash?" A Hammer, as they were colloquially known, was the largest denomination of Imperial currency. It was a small, octagonal coin made of meteoric iron, what the Dwarfs call Gromril. A single one was worth 1,076 gold crowns, or almost 700,000 pfennigs, and more than most knights would earn in a lifetime.

"You don't have to give me a gromril coin. You can pay me in gold."

"Oh, thanks. As if I have that much gold."

"You know someone who does."

"You hypocrite. You just accused me of abusing his generosity. Now you want him to cough up a damned Hammer to you?"

Bloch shrugged. "He's your friend, not mine. And this is business. Besides, Lenz can afford it." I sighed. It was true. Lenz was an attorney, and damned good at his job, which I respected. He was highly in demand not just in Carroburg, but across the Old World. He had presented cases to several of the great lords of men and Dwarfs. Why he lived in such a relative backwater, I never found out.

"He'd do it, too," I said, considering the idea more seriously.

"Just to be clear, I don't actually want a gromril coin. Fucking useless, that'd be. I actually prefer silver."

"Ha-ha," I said, mockingly again. "Fine. For a Hammer, you're going to give me a lot of help. I'm waiting here for a cart full of documents from the archives in the Burg. There are three lists I need you to set your people to. One is a list of six important traitors, including Gerhard. Another is a list of people tentatively identified as having owned a chaotic artifact. The last is a grand list of all the dead, currently about 1,000 names. I'm getting the archivists down in the Municipal Archives on the public records, but I need canvassing. A lot of canvassing. You're also going to make inquiries in every river port on the Reik. And you're going to have your little urchins scour the docklands here for that barge.

"Make sure to plan accordingly. Some of this work might be dangerous. I trust you to select the right people for the job and make them aware of the risk. Also, I need any people you put on this not to fuck up my investigation. No messes."

"Okay," Bloch said, looking less confident than I'd hoped. If the bastard wanted a Hammer, I was going to get every pfennig's worth. If that meant stretching the man's resources, so much the better.

"Tell your people to avoid fights, and to keep this quiet."

"Have you ever seen a horde of guttersnipes?"

"No."

"Yes, you have."

I took his meaning, and chuckled. "Good. But I mean it. I want no watch involvement, no witch hunters, no city government, no blood in the streets, and no press."

Bloch looked more skeptical still. "I'll be honest, Erich, this is probably going to get out. What if the cult finds out?"

"Let them. It's the public I want kept in the dark. I want the traitors to know I'm coming. Hopefully, they'll panic. When people panic, they lash out and make mistakes. And when they do, I'll be there. And then I'll cut their dicks off and watch them bleed to death."

Bloch's face whitened a little "Gods. Really?"

"Maybe one or two. The rest I'll just round up and burn."

"Fucking hunters," Bloch said, rising from the table. I waved him down.

"One last thing. Since you made me feel guilty about the way I treat Lenz, you're also going to provide bodyguards to keep his wife and kids safe."

"Sigmar, do you ever stop asking? I'm going to want a second Hammer before long," he said, rising. But he didn't say no.

I returned to my breakfast, but as Bloch walked away, I raised my head, "Oh, and I'm staying here for 'free,' too."

He didn't turn around, but shouted over his shoulder an exasperated "Fine!"

About half an hour later, a few porters walked into the Gull with boxes of documents. I took a copy of the list with the names and addresses of people who might have owned Chaotic artifacts, and I entrusted the rest to Bloch.

"So," he said, "where are you going first?"

"I'm heading to the Gunthersplatz. Before I do anything else, I need a clear idea of where the riot started. And put those documents away. Hunters'll probably show up here at some point, looking for me."

"I'm offended," he said, with mock outrage. "I'll send a boy for you if I find anything good."

" _Bon_. See you tonight," I said. I turned on my heel and departed the establishment.

* * *

'Lore' note: Regarding currency, I made up my own currency structure for this fic. I know that there exists a possibly canon imperial currency, but it's boring and corresponds exactly to the pre-decimal pound sterling. So, in this fic: 20 copper pfennigs = 1 silver mark; 32 silver marks = 1 gold crown (for 640 pfennigs to the crown). 1,076 gold crowns = 1 gromril Hammer. Other denominations include: schilling = 10 pfennigs; florin = 2 marks; thaler = 4 marks; pfund = 8 marks; gulden = 16 marks; talent = 2 crowns. A typical yearly wage for a peasant would be 3-6 crowns. For a skilled craftsman, 10-20 crowns. Master craftsman, 20-60. Knight, 30-200. Professional (doctor, lawyer, accountant, etc.), 40-100 crowns. Professional State or Imperial soldier: 8-25 crowns, depending on seniority. Witch Hunters: 15-60 crowns, depending on seniority and prior rank.


	5. V: SUUM CUIQUE

This is a long one. I wanted to split it up somehow, but I couldn't find a good way to do it thematically. The next chapter will be much shorter.

* * *

As I rode towards the low town in the cab, I observed the city from the window. As I approached the Gunthersplatz, the scars of the revolt became more and more pronounced. First, it was just a little extra debris in the street. Then I started seeing scorch marks on and divots excavated from walls, broken windows, doors hanging open in the breeze. Miserable people lingered outside those, some huddled, some moving things into or out of homes and tenements. Then buildings were missing chunks. The people outside those buildings usually had all their possessions piled in a sad little heap, getting ready to move to the refugee camp outside the wall. Then they were piles of masonry and wood. No one was outside those, except the ones that were sleeping on the streets. Then they were cinders, and there were corpses on the ground.

Moments after I saw the first corpse, the carriage stopped, and let me out onto the Gunthersplatz. It was like a scene out of hell, which it nearly had become. The cobblestones were scorched, and had even melted in places, taking on an angry red or blue color in some cases. It looked as though they were still hot, but of course they weren't.

Behind me were the ruins of the modest Temple of Sigmar, Guard of the Reik, which had probably been a temple to Manaan not so long ago. It had obviously been the rioters' first architectural victim, but it hadn't been burned, or not mainly. It had literally been pulled down and its remains defaced with sigils of Tzeentch. Witch hunters were overseeing consecrated demolition crews, who were covering it in pitch to be burned properly. The temple's wall fronting on the platz had been destroyed, of course, but the walls on either side hadn't been, and against them, stacked like cordwood, were bodies.

I looked out across the platz to the various streets that fed into it, of which there were six. The cultists had obviously come from the poorest quarters of the city, the southwest. But it was difficult to tell where exactly, because virtually everything to the southwest of the platz was utterly destroyed. I picked a street at random, and began walking down it, wincing slightly.

The street in question was the Feldgasse. The road was strewn with rubble, debris, burnt wood and bodies. I spoke to a few of the locals, those few that remained, and they always told me that the riot had started further west and south. I kept walking. Three hours later, I hadn't made much progress. I needed a better way of doing this.

I decided to wade into the ruins of buildings off the road. I got covered with ash and ended up smelling powerfully of smoke, but I found something on the threshold of what had been a seamstress's shop. In fact, I had sat down on the concrete step, despondent at my lack of success. It was then, while rubbing my fingers on the ash-covered surface, that I spotted a small blue dot. It looked almost like a drip of pain. I drew Arielle, and placed her runes next to the dot. Sure enough, the runes lit up, if barely perceptibly.

I tried to leap to my feet, by a catch in my rib turned into more of an upward stumbling. I walked into the destroyed shop, and looked around for a few minutes. Again, I found nothing. I gritted my teeth and grunted frustratedly. "Damn _it_!" I hissed.

I knew what it meant. There were more of those dots out there, I knew. I had to find them, and that would be no easy task, especially in my condition. I spotted a group of snipes playing in the gutter just a few meters down. I called over to them, "You lads! How would you like to earn a mark?"

Three of them scampered over warily, their filthy, tattered clothes and traumatized eyes briefly made me want to just give them a mark. The charitable impulse caught me by surprise. I was not accustomed to such generous thoughts. If I had met these kids at almost any almost other point in my life, the first thing I would have done would be to cuff them around the ears to make sure they knew I wasn't to be fucked with. I pushed all that to the side to address them, "You lads see this dot here?" I said, indicating the mark

"Aye, guv," the apparent leader said, who I was surprised to note, on closer inspection, was a girl. She looked to be about nine or ten, but I suspected that she was older, and malnourished.

"I'm pretty sure there are more of them about. I need you to find them for me. I especially want to know if you see anything that makes you think there's a pattern that leads somewhere. Can you do that?"

"Wass this 'bout a mark, eh?" the girl said.

"Yes, absolutely. You're the leader, I can tell, so I'll give you this mark up front," I said, reaching into a pouch on my belt to produce a silver coin bearing the image of a gryphon. I addressed the other two, saying, "She's the one who got you this business, so that mark is hers and hers alone. You understand?" They sullenly nodded their heads, while the girl's eyes lit up. "Good. Make sure they all know. If you try to take it from her, I'll know, and I'll burn you at the stake. You know I can. I'm a witch hunter." I was pleased to see the fear in their eyes, and they nodded their heads enthusiastically now.

"Good. So, for the rest of you. Everyone who assists in this job will be paid 5 pfennigs. And I will rely on the word of this girl to tell me who actually worked. Got it?" All three nodded their heads now. "Okay. And don't tell anybody what you're about. Don't want to get robbed or murdered, do we?" They shook their heads. "And don't tell anyone about me. Don't want _me_ getting robbed or murdered before I can pay you, right?" They shook their heads emphatically. "Exactly. Get to work. I'll be here."

* * *

About two hours later, it was dark and I was getting ready to pack it in for the night. Just then, the leader girl appeared seemingly out of nowhere and said, "Got summat for ya, guv'."

I was about to reply, when I looked down the street and saw about ten witch hunters marching in my direction, led by von Kalbach. Just behind him, looking worried, was Yolk. "Shit," I swore under my breath. It wasn't that I wasn't expecting it. In fact, I had expected my little stunt to blow back on me earlier today. But this was damned poor timing.

* * *

Here, Duquesne neglected to add that he hoped his little diversion would continue to divert the attention of certain people long after he and von Kalbach had their reckoning on it.

* * *

I swept the hat off my head, and crammed it under my arm. I jumped to my feet and manhandled a nearby stall owner. I pressed a mark into his hand and stripped him of his long, nondescript woolen cloak, which I threw over my shoulders and pulled up the hood. The man was still spluttering and protesting when the girl and I disappeared into the ruined buildings.

"Don't feel like talkin' ta those other pointies, eh guv'?" she asked, when we were definitely out of sight.

I favored her with a small smile, saying, "Smart girl. No, I don't. What's your name, girl?"

"Nina," she said, as she led me deeper into the destroyed quarter.

"I know another Nina, about your age. She's a very sweet girl, so I'll choose to believe you are, too."

"I ain't, guv."

"Ah-ah! I said I would choose to believe it," I said, grinning at her. She grinned back. "So, what'd you find?"

"Found that patt'n like ya wanted, guv'. We didn't follow it. Figured if pointies was int'rested, might not be safe for us snipes."

"Even smarter. Lead on." She did so, for about five more minutes.

When the girl stopped, she pointed to a cobblestone, saying, "'Ere's where the patt'n starts, guv'. Leads off that direction, down ta the gatehouse."

I knelt and identified the dot, and followed it for about a block. Indeed, there was a dot every twenty to thirty meters. I stood up, satisfied, and said, "Good work, girl. Unfortunately, I don't have time to pay you all in person, so," I pulled a pouch full of pfennigs off my belt, "take this. Should be about five marks worth of pfennigs in there. Enough to cover all the fees I owe?"

"Aye, guv'," she said, beaming at me and the pouch.

As I walked away, I said, without turning my head, "I'd advise you not to pocket it all. Don't want to go getting killed or worse by our fellow snipes, yeah?" I didn't know whether she heard me, but what I did know, even without turning around, was that she was already gone.

A few minutes later, I was standing outside a ruined building, just inside the outermost wall of the city and about two stone's throws from the West Gate. I could tell that, even before the riot, it had been a shithole, but the blue dots pointed directly here. I crossed the threshold, and looked around momentarily in the destruction, but I knew it would yield nothing. I found what I was looking for just a moment later: a trapdoor leading to a basement.

I cleared the door of debris, and yanked on it. It didn't budge, and I realized that its hinges had been destroyed in the fire. I left the building, and pried up a loose cobblestone from the street. I took it inside, knelt by the hinges, and smashed them off with a few quick strikes from the rock, which my partially healed body did not appreciate, and it let me know this by the shooting pains in my arms and knees. I grunted, stood back up, and hauled the trapdoor out of the way. The inside of the trapdoor was very dark, but I could see that there was a ladder inside leading down. I mounted it, and began climbing. The ladder creaked ominously as I did so, and just before I was about to hit the bottom, it collapsed, and I fell about five feet in the dark, landing heavily on my feet, absorbing the impact with my knees, for which I was rewarded with another collection of shooting pains.

As I dusted myself off, I looked up at the ladder. Most of the bottom rungs were destroyed, and I realized they had been weakened in the fire. The first unbroken rung was above my head, and I knew there was no way I was getting out that way. Even if the rung could have supported my entire weight, my injured condition prevented it. "Fuck," I swore. "Hope there's another way out of here."

It was pitch dark, and there were no torches or other lights nearby, so I reached into my overcoat and fished around in one of its many pockets until I withdrew a set of spectacles with green glass lenses. They were an item I had picked up in a curio shop in Tobaro about ten years ago. The shopkeeper thought they were just another knickknack, but they had saved my life several times. I put on the glasses, and the room was suddenly bathed in a rather dim green light. It wasn't as good as full lighting, but it was better than a torch, and I had practice using them.

The basement wasn't large, and it looked nondescript. It was extremely cluttered, with piles of miscellanea everywhere. I saw tarps, fishing equipment, rope, lumber, bricks, bags of grain, bolts of cloth, and even a rather sad-looking rocking horse with still more stuff stacked on top. Nothing was, as far as I could tell, remotely out of place in a typical basement of a house near a river, except for a few piles of books. I looked through those first. I found a few illegal books, but they were just smut, not chaotic. As I advanced deeper into the room, I felt a slight vibration at my hip. I drew Arielle, and her runes shone dully. There was definitely something down here. In one corner, underneath several large tarps, was a pile of weapons, not in very good repair. I wondered why the cultists hadn't used them in the uprising, and filed it away for later. I turned away, and decided to make a circuit around the room. As I did so, I noticed that the Banisher got brighter around the middle of what I thought might be the eastern wall.

I inspected the wall, but didn't see anything obviously different about it than the other walls. I began tapping the wall with Arielle's handle, and eventually heard a dull hollow sound. I then pressed my fingers hard along the wall where the Banisher was brightest, and dragged them along its length. Unfortunately, I didn't feel the seam of a door like I expected, but I knew it was there. I set to looking for the button that would open the door. I checked for all the things that typically contain such buttons, candelabras, shelves, the undersides of desks and tables, but unfortunately found none of any in the basement. And then I remembered the rocking horse, which I realized was an odd item upon which to stack other items. I walked over to it, and I realized it did not rock. At first, I thought the reason was because the rockers were blocked, and indeed they were by pieces of wood. I kicked those out of the way, and it still did not rock. I pushed the miscellaneous items off of it, and I realized I couldn't tip it over, either. I knelt and examined the rockers. It was cleverly hidden, but I could see that it was not only connected to the floor, but that some kind of mechanism passed between the floor and the horse. I examined the horse's body, and found a button underneath the horse's wooden tail. I tried pressing it, but it barely budged. I put both thumbs on it and pressed hard, and was rewarded with a satisfying _click!_ as the button depressed. I then heard some whirring and scraping of gears, and the section of wall I identified earlier retracted slightly, and slid sideways, opening a new passage.

I stood slowly, and drew Arielle. I held her pointing outwards, but close to my body as I stepped through the door, checking either side to make sure no one was waiting in ambush. When I stepped through, the door closed automatically. I almost panicked for a moment, before discovering the button to re-open the door was not hidden on this side, and looked to be better maintained. Still, it would be tricky to get out quickly, especially if I was under fire.

I advanced deeper into the corridor, and found no side rooms of any kind until the corridor came to an end. Through the door there, it opened into what could only be called a large staging room. It was dimly lit, and one corner was filled with benches and tables, one corner with what looked like the remains of military supplies, one corner was filled with religious paraphernalia, and the corner I found myself in had a number of desks. And everything, of course, was daubed with sigils of Tzeentch. There was a stench of blood in the room, and there was dried blood on the floor, probably from some sacrifices on the day of the uprising. Indeed, I spotted a number of corpses stacked by one of the doors leading out of the room, who looked to be young females and to have suffered grievously before their throats were cut. There were devotional icons all over the space, covered in bloody feathers and constructed of human bones in the shape of birds of prey, all beaks and eye sockets.

There were no cultists currently in the room, but I could hear some muffled shuffling and banging coming from rooms beyond. I knew I didn't have much time. I decided to rifle through the desks for any documents. A moment's search revealed nothing. Apparently, the cultists had already finished the cleanup in here, such as it was.

Unfortunately, it was then that my time ended. I had no time to duck behind one of the desks as three cultists came through the far door, talking. They immediately noticed me and began shouting. One tried to run back through the door, but I raised Arielle and shot him in the head. The other two rushed me. I killed the one on the right with Arielle's second shot, and ran towards the other one, the rush of violence bringing a smile to my face. I holstered Arielle and drew my gladius. The cultist had a mace, and swung it clumsily at me. I caught it on the flat of the gladius' blade, and swung the pommel up to his face, smashing him in the jaw. With my left hand, I punched him hard in the ribs. I grabbed him by the throat, and punched him again with the gladius hilt in my right fist, and he fell unconscious immediately, dropping to the floor in a heap. I grabbed some rope from the remains of the military supplies, and tied his feet and hands tightly. I re-sheathed the gladius, re-loaded Arielle, and threw the cultist over my shoulder.

I was just turning around, when all five of the doors opening on to the staging room opened. Cultists spilled in, at least eight of them. Most carried some kind of blunt weapon, but a few carried a torch or a single shot pistol. I dropped my prisoner unceremoniously, and suddenly the Striker blazed. Almost involuntarily, I snatched the drape of my warded brigandine overcoat, and transposed it between myself and the barrel of a pistol. The bullet slammed into the leather, splitting it open, and splattered on the consecrated steel beneath. Again the Striker blazed, and I turned my back to kneel on the ground, and felt two more bullets strike my back, denting the plates and sending great waves of pain through my torso, and I thought I heard a rib break.

I ignored the pain with an animalistic grunt, then stood and spun back around, just in time to kill the first two cultists with Arielle. I passed her to my left hand, and re-drew my gladius. As one, three cultists swung their weapons at me. I pivoted away from two of them, and caught one stroke painfully on my left forearm, though I didn't feel any bones break. I slashed at the two I had pivoted from, but didn't draw blood. The other, I pistol-whipped with Arielle, crushing his face and sending him to the floor in a screaming, bloody heap. I quickly repositioned myself on the other side of the man, executing him with a quick, downward thrust to his throat, eliciting a gout of blood that splashed my right arm. Behind me, my captive had begun to stir, and I kicked him back toward the corner as I retreated, trying not to let them surround me. The cultists formed a wary semicircle around me. I kicked my prisoner one more time, turning slightly to face him, and, seizing what they thought was an opportunity, two of the cultists lunged. I turned the kick into a pirouette, hitting the two attackers in the face with the hem of my brigandine coat. Momentarily stunned, I thrust my gladius into the leftmost attacker's groin, and then threw myself bodily with the other, knocking him to the ground. I repositioned myself on the other side of him, a few stomps from my boot putting an end to him as I re-assessed the situation.

The groin-stabbed traitor almost immediately expired, and only four cultists remained. I briefly saw fear in their eyes before all four rushed me, three of them holding torches. I picked the one second from the right, and threw Arielle into his face, hard. The gun's heavy barrel cracked his forehead, and he recoiled, his torch flying out of his hands. I spun over to engage the rightmost cultist, now with little support. He parried my first stroke, but that had been a feint. I brought my left hand up while he was distracted with my gladius, and I poked him hard in the eye with my thumb, and then punched the eye socket. He screamed and recoiled, clutching his face and dropping his weapon. I put my gladius through his throat. The remaining two cultists rushed back at me, simultaneously striking at me with their great clubs. I tried to spin away, but a spike of pain tore through my left leg in mid-pivot, and I stumbled over the corpse I had just made. The cultists thus missed their swings, but I was now on the floor. I rolled, frantically, narrowly evading two more strokes. As I rolled onto my back, some distance away from the two, my hand flashed into my coat, and I withdrew a throwing knife, which I projected wildly in the cultists' direction. I heard a shout of pain, and got to my knee. But I had only grazed one of the cultists, and the other was standing over my kneeling form, swinging his club in a powerful downward arc. I caught the blow on the flat of my gladius, which I hadn't adequately braced with my left hand. The result was a weak deflection and a nasty gash in my left hand. The club kept going after impacting the blade, smashing into my left shoulder. I was driven to the ground, screaming in pain. The screaming was partly a feint, and it gave me an instant's breather as the cultists thought I was mortally wounded. It was enough of a window that, as I fell to the ground, I was able to lash out with the gladius in my uninjured right hand, and badly lacerating the cultist's thigh and leg. He fell to the ground in a heap next to me. I crawled over to him and drove the gladius into his gut, after which he stirred no more.

I rolled, still on the ground, and the cultist I had grazed was moving again, charging at me, in fact. I fumbled for an instant in my coat, and then withdrew my other throwing knife, and put it into his throat. His momentum carried him and his weapon forward another meter, and the club fell with a _whump!_ next to my ear. I almost relaxed when I heard the shuffling footsteps of the cultist I had thrown Arielle at behind me. I looked around, and Arielle was just an arm's length from where I was sprawled. I grabbed her, and broke open the breech, ejecting the spent brass. I shoved a single cartridge into one of her barrels, and snapped the breech closed. At the last second, I brought her up and fired into the moving cultist's thigh. His leg disintegrated between the knee and hip in mid-stride, and he toppled rather comically to the floor. He didn't even scream, and when I walked over to finish him, he still looked more surprised than fearful or pained. I looked down at him with something that might have been pity, before I smashed my gladius through his face, spraying blood all over my jerkin, overcoat, and face. Then I collapsed in a heap, the sword still protruding from the man's brain.

On the ground, I let out a massive, relieved, feral guffaw, "HahahaHA! Oh, yes. I have missed this," I said to no one, laughing uncontrollably and utterly heedless of the possibility that there might be more cultists. There was nothing in the world quite as sweet as betting your life against long odds and winning with only the skill of your mind and the strength of your body. Fighting in a unit just wasn't the same. A moment later, I had cause to regret my rest and reverie, for I smelled smoke. I looked around, and saw, to my horror, that the torch that had gone flying had landed among the consumed military supplies, which consisted mostly of dry crates and sawdust packing. The flames were already licking dangerously up the wooden walls and to the wooden ceiling. The torch couldn't have landed there more than three minutes ago, but it had already grown to an entirely unquenchable and imminently deadly blaze. My relief vanished, and I felt panic crawling up my throat. I shoved it down. I needed to think if I was going to survive.

I reloaded Arielle, and got to my feet. Or, I tried to. The pain in my shoulder was immense, becoming this unbearable, whole-body ache, and it flared when I tried to stand. After a few more tries, I was on my feet. I was about to scan the doors for more cultists, but I discarded it as a waste of time. "Shitshit _shit_!" I swore, the panic rising again.

My prisoner was regaining consciousness, and was beginning to moan in what was probably both pain and fear. I briefly considered asking him the way out of here, but even if he were in any shape to tell me, I doubted he would. I walked over to him, found the remnants of the rope I used to tie him up, and rigged up a quick dragging harness. I then shoved a bloody handkerchief I found on one of the dead cultists into his mouth, and covered his head with a burlap bag. I then recovered my throwing knives, and ripped the sleeve off a dead man's shirt, which I fashioned into a makeshift bandage for my freely-bleeding left palm.

I looped the dragging harness around my waist, and began to walk as quickly as I could manage between my pain and the burden. I picked the door next to which the cultists had stacked the remains of their sacrifices, figuring that one to be the closest to whatever exit they were using, still holding Arielle ready. I didn't encounter any more cultists, and I was becoming more and more sure there weren't any more in the basement. Either I'd killed them all, or they'd fled.

I was rewarded in my choice of door by the sight of various items stacked in the corridor outside, evidently for removal. However, the door had not been the one the farthest from the fire, and it was already filling with smoke. Soon, it would fill with fire. I raced, or hobbled, down the corridor, dragging the unfortunate cultist in my wake. At the end, the corridor widened into a small anteroom which was filled with more items ready to be removed, and another one of those trick doors. This door, I immediately noticed, was much larger. I looked briefly for a button, but found that there was a large lever instead. I hoped this door would require less force to open, but I was immediately disappointed when I tried to depress the lever. It took nearly a full minute of straining to depress, during which time I began to feel dangerously lightheaded. Whether it was from the smoke, the pain or my injuries, I couldn't tell.

When the lever depressed, the hidden door slid open, revealing a large room. I walked through the door, warier than before. I thought it was possible there were additional cultists out here that hadn't noticed the scrum behind them. And sure enough, there were. I took off the dragging harness, and smacked my prisoner on the crown of his head with Arielle to make sure he stayed quiet.

The room I had emerged into appeared to be a large underground garage. There were several carriages and carts lined up along the back wall, and parked in an orderly fashion in the center. There was a cobbled ramp leading up to what I assumed was the street, and above us I assumed was a business. Evidently, we had left the destroyed area, though I doubted that I'd come more than a kilometer from where I entered the secret passages.

I padded across the room a few times, and spied only two men. I couldn't say for sure that they were cultists, though I assumed they were. It looked like this garage functioned as a regular place of business, in addition to a loading dock for the cult. I couldn't say for sure that the owner was even necessarily a cultist. Surely, he did business with the cult, but plenty of normal smugglers used secret warehouses not unlike the secret passages I had just come out of to avoid taxes. Certainly, the items the cultists were removing appeared quite nondescript, and a casual observer would almost certainly not have noticed their true character.

I considered what to do about the men. If they were cultists, I'd have to kill them. If they were just normal criminals, I'd probably be able to pay them off.

I stealthily approached one, keeping his friend in sight. I drew my dirk in my left hand, Arielle in my right. I sprang up and embraced the man from behind, putting the point of the dirk at his throat, and Arielle to his temple. "Quiet!" I hissed. "I need you to be _quiet_. Can you do that?"

"Y-yes," he said, not alerting his friend.

"Good. Are you a member of the cult?"

"Cult? What cult? Oh, fuck you're a pointy," he said, noticing my hat. "No, dammit, no!" he whined in a whisper. "I'm just one of Irena's guys."

"Bear-fucking degenerates," I spat, and the man shuddered. There are many gangs in this city, but Irena Voychenka's Kislevites are my least favorite. "Never mind that. What you need to know is this: That secret warehouse in there?" I jerked my head in the direction, "was not only a base for traitors to humanity but also on godsdamned fire. So what say me, you, your friend and my friend all get out of here alive, and you and your friend get to earn a mark apiece for your trouble?"

"You're just going to kill me," he said, pathetically.

"No, no. I have no interest in criminals today. Only cultists. Plus, I've already killed like thirteen people today, which seems like plenty. Wouldn't you agree?"

"Thirteen?" he said. He looked at me again, and saw the blood I was practically soaked in. He started shaking, "Oh, matka."

"Your mother can't save you. Do we have a deal?"

"Yes! Yes! Just don't kill me, please!" he pleaded, pathetically.

"Good. Then let your friend over there know," I said, straightening up.

My hostage called across the garage, "Hey Boris. We're going to give this paying customer and his friend a ride." His voice was a little shaky.

"Who the fuck is that?" Boris asked, his voice full of bravado. He looked for a second. "Fuck no! He's a fuckin' pointy! Fuckin' kill him!" Boris began to draw the single-shot pistol from his belt.

"I wouldn't recommend that," I said, pointing Arielle at Boris, who froze, and I could see the blood and the courage drain from his face. "I'm a paying customer, remember?"

"What about our client?" Boris asked the other Kislevite.

I answered for him, "Your clients, such as they are, are all dead. Oh, and they're cultists. Also, their warehouse is on fire and so will we be in about two minutes if we don't get the hell out of here. I gave your friend here my word I'd let you go, and I'm a man of my word. As a sign of good faith, here's a mark." I dropped the dirk into my boot and reached into my purse with my left hand, and withdrew a silver coin, which I tossed to Boris, who caught it. I passed one to the other man as well.

"Good enough for me, I suppose. Get in that cart," he said, pointing to a wagon near the ramp that was already harnessed.

Before I moved, I said, "Oh, and there's a prisoner over there by the door. Go get him and put him in the cart."

* * *

A few minutes later, we were rumbling along the cobblestones away from the burning warehouse and business. As we left, we alerted the locals to the fire, though I knew that not everyone living above it would survive. Just more for the cult to answer for.

"So," I said to the man I had taken prisoner, "what's your name?"

"Anatoly," the man said.

"Okay, Anatoly and Boris. So, while we're trundling along all pleasant-like, I'm going need to ask you some questions."

"No," Boris said. "Not part of the deal."

"We didn't discuss questions at all. How much to make you talk? Another mark?"

"What the hell?" Anatoly said, and Boris shrugged. I passed them each another mark.

"Who owns the garage?"

"Irena does," Boris said.

"What about the secret warehouse?"

"Also Irena. She rents it out to smugglers and the like when she ain't using it," Boris continued.

"How long had the current client been using the warehouse?"

"I dunno," Boris said. "Anatoly?"

"I'm not sure either, but it wasn't long. Maybe a month?"

That was puzzling. Irena was greedy and cruel, but she wasn't a moron. And only a moron would work with cultists.

"And you're sure the cult was vacating today?"

"That was the order," Anatoly said.

"Who gave the order? I know it wasn't Irena. No way she'd work with cultists."

"I don't know who actually gave the order, but I get my orders from Pawel," Anatoly said. I mentally reviewed my gang files. Pawel Marcinkowski was one of Dmitri Anushikin's soldiers. Dmitri was one of Irena's less-trusted captains. He was probably even more vicious, and fiendishly ambitious. I also hated him personally, contrasted with the professional hatred I felt for Irena. About a year ago, my chapter had tried to infiltrate Irena's organization. We failed, and Dmitri tortured the two men I'd trained to death.

"Dmitri, then." It had to be Dmitri. Worse, it looked like Dmitri was directly muscling Irena for territory, property, and clients. But if Dmitri wasn't as smart as Irena, neither was he stupid enough to do business directly with cultists. That meant he hadn't known they were cultists when he rented the warehouse to them. Sloppy. But even if he didn't know at the time he rented it, there's no way he didn't have his eye on what was going on inside. He would have found out their true loyalties pretty quickly, which would then mean either that his pay had been raised to make it worth the risk, or he had been turned by the cult. Unless, of course, he hadn't been able to get in. If Dmitri had let them stay with him blind like that, it either meant he was stupid or he was powerless to remove them. If it was the former, money was probably still the answer. If it was the latter, I doubt Dmitri would have had his guys helping with the vacation; no way he'd still be cooperating with them after they shut him out of any knowledge of what was going on inside his warehouse. The best case was that Dmitri was getting exceptionally greedy, probably as part of a scheme to take over the gang. The worst case was that the cult was infiltrating Irena's organization, and actively supporting Dmitri. That would be very bad indeed, but also an opportunity. Irena and I might have a common enemy, and the thought of getting even with Dmitri brought another savage smile to my face.

I continued, "Doesn't surprise me that it was Dmitri, though I doubt he'd would work directly for cultists either. Do you know who contracted the job?" I didn't let them in on my theories.

"I don't, but the word is Dmitri got paid a lot," Anatoly said, confirming part of my theory.

"Makes sense. Probably someone related to the cult, but not obviously. An associate. Do you know if he got paid more than once?"

"Did he fuck them for more money, you mean?" Boris asked

"Yeah."

"Probably. Dmitri does shit like that all the time. It's bad for business," Boris complained. It was an interesting tidbit, but didn't add anything to my theory.

"What about you, Anatoly? And I'm talking about an unusually large extra payment." I asked. Anatoly seemed to know more about Dmitri's dealings than Boris.

"Not that I know of," Anatoly said. That didn't necessarily surprise me either. Dmitri was capable of discretion, though not as much as Irena.

"Guess I'll have to ask Dmitri," I said

"Good fuckin' luck, pointy," Boris said.

"Oh, see, you don't know me. I can talk to whomever I want."

We passed the next few minutes in silence before Anatoly spoke up again, "Thirteen guys, really? And you kept that one alive the whole time?" he asked, indicating the moaning prisoner with a thumb.

"It may have been only eleven. I wasn't paying too much attention to the count."

"Fuck me," Boris said. "Eleven guys. What is you, some kinda Reiksguard?"

"Reiksguard are pussies. I wouldn't be caught dead next one of them, unless it was a corpse I'd made. Bunch of rich cocksuckers playing at knights. Once," I said, chuckling, "I remember some Bretonnian knights and Reiksguard came to Barak Varr, on their way...fuck knows where. Probably Araby to break some peasant skulls. They came into my tavern late at night, by which time I was utterly shitfaced. Just seeing them made me blindingly angry, for some reason. So I went over and bumped into one of the Reiksguard, intentionally, and challenged him to a duel. Again, I'm drunk, and he's stone-cold sober. He drew his sword, and I caught his first blow on my bracer. I ripped the sword from his hand and beat him bloody with the pommel. Didn't even kill the little catamite." I was laughing loudly now, but Boris and Anatoly just stared.

"Ursun's hairy cock, man. What in living fuck _are_ you?" Boris said, repeating himself dumbly.

"That is a damned good question," I said, suddenly serious. I could see that it unnerved Boris and Anatoly, but I had no intention of putting them at their ease.

"Fuck me," he said, another repetition. He turned to Anatoly and said, "'S gettin' too fuckin' dangerous in this city, Toll, and we ain't gettin' paid enough. We should just get the fuck out and go home. I still got family in Praag."

"What about Irena? She'll come after us."

I spoke up, having come out of my reverie, "She won't. She'll be busy, I promise."

"Fuck it. Let's go," Anatoly said.

"Smart," I said.

We passed the last five minutes of the journey in silence. By the time we got to my little safehouse, it was nearer midnight than sundown, and the meager street lighting in this poor part of town was the perfect cover for what I was had to happen next.

Boris and Anatoly unloaded my prisoner, and dropped him onto the street in front my safehouse door. "Thank you kindly. Now, as a bonus for your cooperation, and to speed you on your way home, I'm going to pay you each a crown. Agreed?" I said, tossing two gold coins with my right hand. As the Kislevites reached to catch them, and at the top of the throw, I spun my wrist in a complex little gesture.

The motion activated the track inside my right sleeve, and an instant later, my hand was filled with my small, two-shot holdout pistol. Anatoly and Boris, still distracted by the coins, didn't notice, or at least not until I shot Anatoly in the head, the tiny gun making a barely audible _pop!_ Boris only had time to croak something unintelligible before I put the second shot into his lung.

"Sorry, gentlemen. I lied," I said to Boris's dying form, blood flowing from his flapping mouth. "Can't have this little episode getting back to Dmitri, can we?"

"B-b..." Boris gurgled.

"Yes, you said you were leaving. I don't trust you."

I finished Boris with a quick thrust from my dirk, through the skull. I knelt to strip the bodies of their purses and any identifying information, including the little brass disks that all of Irena's people carried. That was the easy part. The hard part, thanks to my shoulder injury, was hauling their bodies onto the cart. By the time I was finished, I was doubled over, panting. I slapped the harnessed horse on its rump, sending it and the cart clattering away towards the inner wall. I dragged the prisoner into the safehouse, and slammed the door behind me.

* * *

Title note: The title translates (roughly) as 'to each his own,' and refers to a Roman concept of the ends of justice. To the Romans (and subsequent civilizations), justice was supposed to give each person, no matter how humble or how exalted, their 'own,' which included three broad classes: rights, property, and obligations. Each person was therefore to be made secure in the former two and not forgiven for failing to meet the latter.


	6. VI: THE SOUL INCITES TO VIOLENCE

I finished tying the naked young man into the chair, and whipped the bag off his head. I looked into his terrified eyes and said, "I'm going to remove the gag now. You can scream if you want to. Nobody's going to hear you, and it'll probably end with me cuffing you again and putting the gag back in until you're ready to be civil. So I thought we could just skip all that. Agreed?"

The man's head bobbed up and down frantically. I yanked out the gag, sending him into a coughing fit. "W-where am I-I-I?" he said, still coughing heavily as his nose and eyes leaked.

"You're in a place that I keep for…well, for exactly these occasions."

"W-who are y-you?"

"You aren't the first person to ask me that question today. We'll get to that in a minute. For now, I need your name."

"K-Kurt."

"Kurt. Nice to meet you," I said in what I thought was an amiable manner, though the man appeared more disconcerted than ever. He was older than he looked, I realized. When I had first captured him, I thought he was only a kid, but now he looked to be in his late twenties, which fit much better with my theory about who in the cult was still alive. "My name is Erich Duquesne, and as you've probably guessed, I'm a witch hunter. But that's not who I am, or at least not all of who I am. I am a contradiction."

The man looked more and more confused, "What's a c-contadriction?"

"A _contradiction_ , is when two things are in opposition. So if I told you that the sky was purple, and you said it was blue, you'd be contradicting me. Sitting before you is not one man but two, and they contradict each other. One of those men, exposed to a lifetime of horrific violence and unrelenting brutality first as a knight and then as a mercenary, is a cruel bully. That man has murdered and violated a lot of innocents, stolen their property and then burned what was left. He enjoys violence and making bad decisions. The other man before you, conditioned by years of reading textbooks and being lectured to by some of the most progressive minds in the known world, is a rigorous thinker and bit of a philosopher who desires to see justice done in all things. That man has saved many innocents from execution, at no small risk to himself. He enjoys solving problems and testifying against criminals in court.

"Therefore, when I say that I _want_ , heh heh," I said with a nasty chuckle, "to watch you die screaming, you should take me very seriously." The man began to shake uncontrollably. "At the same time, when I say that I would like to see you convicted of your crimes before an impartial tribunal and after a hearing at which you were allowed to present your defense with the assistance of counsel learned in the law, you should also take me seriously.

"Fortunately, and unfortunately, for you and for I, the circumstances of this inquisition demand that your interaction with the State be limited to _this,_ single, encounter, and so neither of my selves will be getting exactly what they want."

Kurt was sobbing openly now, and the chair he was on teetered dangerously, "W-w-w-w-what does that mean?"

"It means that, no matter what happens, I'm going to execute you at the end of our conversation, which the first man will enjoy. That's the bad news. The good news is that that second man doesn't believe that torture is a very good way of getting to the truth. And so, if you tell me anything and everything you know about the cult in a forthright and cooperative manner, you'll die instantly. And, if you like, I'll even absolve you of your sins before I do." Of course, I couldn't actually absolve him, not being a man of the cloth. But there was no reason to let him know that.

By this time, Kurt had sobbed himself to exhaustion, and was only heaving slightly when he said, "Y-you'd really forgive my sins?"

"If it gets me to the truth, absolutely. But, you should know that if you hold out on me, and I'll know, and then I'll torture you to death. And, before you say you don't know anything, or that you're a nobody in the cult, I know that's a lie. The uprising was four days ago. I am reasonably certain that whatever cannon fodder the cult had at its disposal got used up that day. If you're still alive, and a member of the cult, it means that you were too important to be expended, meaning that someone trusts you with something. And, before you say you're not a member of the cult at all, I know you are. You don't appear to have any mutations, though I'm sure an autopsy would reveal many, but you do have a tattoo inside your armpit of a crescent, which I know to be a variation on the Mark of Tzeentch."

Kurt opened his mouth to speak, but then I felt the slightest of breezes on my elbow, and Kurt's mouth closed, and he went completely still. Almost unconsciously, my right hand fell to rest on Arielle.

"Truth." Kurt said, in an odd voice. "Ah, the vanities of you humans. Especially Imperials. Fucking insufferable you are."

"Obviously, you've never met a Tilean," I said, realizing that his misidentification of me was a deliberate insult. "Speaking of, I don't believe _we've_ met," I said, gripping Arielle tighter.

The thing that was and was not Kurt kept talking as though I hadn't spoken, "The problem with truth is that it does not exist. Everything means something different to everybody, and each of their versions is equally true to them. Your quaint ideas about truth and reality are no match the power of perception and self-delusion."

"Well, you would say that," I said, squinting slightly. I noticed a slight blue shimmer at one of Kurt's shoulders, and his unremarkable brown eyes had turned black. "Being a daemon of Tzeentch." I considered for a moment, and raised my eyebrows. "Though I'm hard pressed to call you wrong. What kind are you?"

"What _kind_ am I? Again with truth. The idea that we have 'types' at all is an endless source of amusement among my colleagues."

"Oh, what, at tea parties in hell?"

"More like staff meetings, but yes."

I was taken aback at this bizarre answer, and I couldn't help but chuckle. I mastered myself and asked, in what I hoped a serious voice, "What is your role in the cult?"

"Please, I beg you, stop. You're just embarrassing yourself."

"Fine. Then why are you here?"

"I've come to deliver you a warning-"

"I'm going to interrupt you right there. You should know that warnings will only make me more interested."

The daemon inclined Kurt's head in my direction, saying, "Fair. How about threats? How do you react to threats?"

"Generally not well, though I welcome you to try."

The thing made Kurt grin. "I'll be succinct then. Markus, Ulrica, Wolfgang, Margarethe, Anneliese, Katharina, and Hildegarde. I know you care about them."

My nostrils flared slightly, and my hand gripped Arielle tighter. "Then you know I'll protect them."

"I do. And there's only one way to do it: back off."

* * *

At this point, Duquesne omitted to mention to the panel that the daemon had offered another way out: joining the cult. The thing had flattered the hunter's vanity and intellect, but Duquesne hadn't considered it for even a second. Certainly not.

* * *

"Why not just kill me?"

"Your superiors would notice, though we will, of course, kill you if it comes to that."

"Oh, you'll try. But there's another way I can protect them."

"You can't kill me with that piddling thing," Not-Kurt said, nodding to Arielle. "And even if you could, Lenz's family would still die."

"What if I kill everyone you send for him?"

"You can't."

"Oh, but I can. See, I know you're bluffing. The cult is weak. Don't try to tell me otherwise. You don't have the resources for a concerted campaign inside the inner wall. Even if you did, you'd risk exposure. And Lenz, fortunately, is a very prominent person in this city. If he died, people would want to know why. And I'd be there, pointing them right to you. I figure you've got the means for one, maybe two, stealthy attacks. That is a challenge to which I am equal. And," I said, now gripping Arielle very tightly, "my rune weapon might not be able to kill you, but I can damn sure cause you pain."

I leapt to my feet, ignored the blossoming pain in my torso and legs, and kicked the chair out from behind me, preternaturally quick. I whipped Arielle from her holster, the Striker blazing brightly. The daemon was still ripping itself from its bonds, when I aligned Arielle with Kurt's face, and pulled both triggers. The Banisher flared to life, its bright blue light almost blinding me, and two huge rifle slugs, imbued with the hatred of long-dead Dwarfs, slammed into the bridge of poor Kurt's nose. His head disintegrated, and there was a brief shimmer around the fountain of blood that had replaced the head, followed by an ear-splitting scream. I screamed back, shouting, "FRIEDRICH UHL! REMEMBER THAT NAME, ABOMINATION! HIS SOUL DEMANDS VENGEANCE, AND BY THE LADY, HE SHALL HAVE IT! I AM CHARLES ERICH DUQUESNE, AND I SHALL _NOT! SUFFER! YOU! TO! LIVE!_ "

* * *

Was that lame or unearned? Let me know.


	7. VII: FIRE

I slumped to the floor, exhausted, all the anger suddenly gone. I stared blankly at Kurt's headless corpse. The silence was deafening. I took several deep breaths, and expelled them in a rush. I closed my eyes, and thought about what I wouldn't give to be in the Gull drinking myself into oblivion. If I needed a reason to hate the cult, keeping me from my brown liquors was enough.

I knew I had to move. I had to get to Lenz's. I knew the cultists were probably already moving. I seethed again, this time with fear, and my heart rate and breath quickened even more. I thought about Maggie, Ana, Nina, and Hilde, and the way they always tackled me to the ground in the foyer when I came by, the way they called me Uncle Ric, the way Wolf chuckled warmly, and the way Rikki tut-tutted in disapproval. I didn't love Lenz, but I loved his family.

I tried to move, but I was too tired and in too much pain. I was even too tired to be angry. No matter the grisly scenes of blood and fire and bereft parents flashing through my mind, it seemed that all my joints had frozen from pain, fatigue and magical healing, and I could hardly twitch, let alone stand. After a few wincing, painful tries, I managed to reach out and grasp Arielle by her barrel. I rubbed the Striker hard, even my knuckles protesting painfully. It pulsed slightly, and I felt its power seeping into me, slowly, awakening the rage I knew I would need to make it through the rest of the night. It was a reassuring feeling, but my eyelids were still too heavy to keep open.

I don't know if or how long I slept, but it felt like my eyes had been closed for only a second when they snapped open, reacting to a bright, new light source in the room. I stared at Kurt, whose corpse had caught on bright blue fire. In an instant, my fatigue fell away, and my heart began to thump in my chest. "Shit! Fucking fires! No more godsdamned fires!" It wasn't an idle concern. This safehouse was a condemned tenement in the poor quarter, and it leaned drunkenly against one of its neighbors, and its attic was connected by a ladder to its other neighbor. A fire here could easily consume the rest of the poor quarter. Unfortunately, I had no good way to put it out. Blankets wouldn't do.

I was scrambling to my feet when the situation, somehow, got worse. A voice sounded from outside, shouting "Duquesne! Get the fuck out here! We need to talk!" It was von Kalbach. I absolutely _did not_ have time to talk to him, and I welcomed the rage that flooded into me from his interference. Idly, I resented the need to get a new safehouse.

"Am I under arrest?" I shouted to him, affecting sarcasm, as I collected a few choice items from the room, including a punch dagger and a few cylinders of heavy lead. As the fire spread, I realized that it could be a good distraction for me to escape by. I decided to stall a little more.

"Not right now. But there are a lot of very angry people who'd like a word with you," he said, undoubtedly referring to the parents and attorneys of the hunters my little sideshow had proven to be corrupt. I grinned, despite the anger, my countless throbbing pains and the increasingly choking smoke of the fire.

"Glad to hear that you're keeping busy in my absence! But shouldn't _they_ be answering _your_ questions?" I tried not to snarl, lest he catch on too early.

"I look forward to hearing you tell them that," he called. "Enough stalling. Get out here, or we're coming in."

I was climbing up the internal ladder that was the only way to traverse the tenement's three floors. I stepped out, and knelt by a second-floor window that crookedly overlooked the back of the house and the Mauerstraße. I could see two hunters out there, and there was probably a third holding the horse I kept in a small makeshift stable back there. About three feet below the window, was the awning of the stable. It was going to be my way out. I walked/crawled to the other side of the house, to another window. I peered out, and saw Kalbach tapping his foot on the ground impatiently. I retreated to the center of the house, "You'll probably want to come in anyway. There's a fire!"

" _Now_ ," he shouted back, "you _are_ under arrest!" I then heard him address the other hunters, "No more damned fires! Get your asses in there and put it out! And get me that piece of shit!"

Upon hearing this order, the two hunters I could see in the back pelted into the house through the back door. I opened the shutters on the window overlooking the awning, and dropped lightly onto its timbers. I heard the horse snort, and a voice said, "What was that?"

 _Idiot_ , I thought. I leapt down from the awning, and found myself facing a young hunter. He opened his mouth to shout, but I was already in motion. I had put one of the heavy metal cylinders into my right hand, and clocked him a powerful blow across the chin, and he spun a little before falling unconscious. I had to consciously restrain myself from beating him to death right there. Instead, I untied the horse. I considered saddling him, but didn't have time. I leapt onto his back, and he bolted off down Wall Street, which followed the inside of the outer wall and the outside of the inner wall. The clattering of his hooves on the cobbles must have alerted Kalbach, for I heard him scream my name in frustration.

I looked over my shoulder, but didn't see any immediate pursuers. I grinned again, "That's right, asshole. Say my name."

* * *

I rode hard for the inner wall, but slowed to a canter when I approached the Miller's Gate. It wasn't the most convenient gate, which would have been the Mud Gate, the most westerly gate of the generally east-west inner wall. The Mud Gate, being the traditional entry point for the hoi polloi into the inner wall, was heavily guarded. The Miller's Gate was much less so, and had the most easily bribed guards.

I slowed to a walk, attempting to appear unhurried as the guardhouse came into sight. The gate, of course, was closed. The Miller's Gate generally closed around dusk, but citizens who lived or had business inside were generally able to gain access at any time. "Ho!" someone shouted from the gate. "Who goes there?"

"A witch hunter, hoping for a warm cot in the Grand Chapterhouse after a long day!" I shouted, again swallowing my anger and trying to sound nonchalant.

"An 'unter, eh?" the voice said. "Meet me 'neath tha gate!"

I trotted up, and dismounted. A small, secondary gate opened, disgorging one of my favorite gatekeepers, a fat old guard named Klaus. "Klaus!" I said, trying not to appear too happy to see him. "Mind opening the gate for an old friend?"

"We ain't friends, Master 'Unter."

"Since when?" I said, as anxiety built in my gut, warring with the rage burning at the back of my skull.

"Since I read the order what got posted today."

"You can't read," I said, forcing a chuckle and inviting him to do the same. He didn't.

"Order says you ain't allowed ta pass."

"Who? Erich Duquesne?"

"'Im 'specially, sir."

"Well, how do we know for sure that I'm this Duquesne character?" I said, almost failing to hide my anger and fear.

"You sure look lots like 'im, sir," he said, clearly playing dumb.

"Could you be persuaded to decide that I wasn't Erich Duquesne?"

"Might could. What kinda 'centive you gots in mind?"

Normally, I'd bribe the man with a schilling. I doubted that would be enough tonight. I was running out of time, so I tossed him a thaler. Four marks, or eight schillings, should be more than enough. But Klaus just stared at me. I dug out another thaler, and gave it to him. "Excellent, sir," he said, opening a slightly larger inner gate that would admit me and my horse. "'Ave a pleasant evenin.'"

I simply stared daggers at him, and rode through. I upped the pace to a canter, and considered going to a full gallop, but didn't want to raise any additional alarm, or alert any attackers on their way to Lenz's house that I was coming. In my anger, I swore that, if I survived this, I'd be back to take those thalers out of Klaus's flesh.

* * *

I dismounted about a block from Lenz's house. I crept along the walls of the upper-class town estates that filled his street. They were fairly standard affairs, third-acre plots encircled by an eight-foot stone wall, punctured by one ornate wrought iron gate, a small guardhouse inside the gate. Inside, the properties were dominated by a courtyard with a fountain, and, behind the fountain, a double stone staircase leading up to a columned portico and the front door, and usually some kind of deck encircling the building, overlooking a small strip of lawn that also encircled the house. The houses themselves were tall and narrow, between three and five stories. Their facades were timber-framed, and the plaster between the framing wood was generally brightly colored. Lenz's house was painted a bright green, which I had always hated, reminded me too much of my family's crest, the same color.

As I approached Lenz's house, number six on the Oldenhauerstrasse, I noticed that its gate was slightly ajar. " _Fuck_!" I swore, almost silently, and felt my hands begin to shake uncontrollably, the fear nearly paralyzing me. I forced it down, and slipped through the gate, the fog curling around me as I did so. I darted to the guardhouse, and found the corpse of Lenz's longtime gatekeeper, Eugen. I swore again. He had been garroted. I padded up to the front door, and it too was slightly ajar. I stepped inside, silently. I drew Arielle in my right hand, and took the punch dagger in my left, its blade poking menacingly out from between my fore and middle fingers. I checked the first few rooms downstairs, but there was no one. I stepped back out into the main hallway that ran the length of the house. At the end, it turned into a staircase that branched off in either direction, permitting access to the second floor and a terrace overlooking the large sitting room arranged around the staircase. I stomped on the ground, not loudly enough to wake anyone who wasn't already up, but enough to startle someone not expecting it. Sure enough, I saw a swirl of black fabric in that sitting room. I leveled Arielle, and fired. The noise, in the silence of the high town, sounded like the end of the world. I quickly dropped the punch dagger into an empty bullet loop on my belt, ejected the spent shell casing, picked another from my belt, slammed it home.

I sprinted down the hallway. My victim was still squirming when I got there, and drove my knee into his chest, eliciting an expulsion of breath. I punched him so savagely in bridge of the nose with the dagger, that his skull collapsed in on itself, killing him. I pelted up the stairs, and now heard a growing commotion. Coming down the stairs from the third floor was another man in black fabric. He raised a small pistol crossbow and fired at me. I dove into a hallway, discharging Arielle in his direction as I did so. I hit the ground rolling, and dropped into a shooter's kneel just inside the hallway. I saw the man's leg come into view, and I pulled Arielle's trigger. The bullet slammed into the man's foot, and he fell screaming. A punch to his forehead with the dagger ended that. I left the dagger protruding from his head for a moment while I reloaded.

I stood, ripped the dagger from the man's skull, and began running upstairs, to the sleeping quarters, shouting, "Markus! Rikki! Wolf! Maggie! Ana! Nina! Hilde! Everyone alive?" After a few instants of shuffling, I began hearing the voices of Lenz's family as they confirmed their continued existence. Thirty seconds later, I had heard from all but Anneliese. I pushed down another wave of panic, and sprinted to her room. I burst through the door to her room and found the little girl being held off the ground by another man in black fabric. He had one of those pistol crossbows pointed at her neck. My heart leapt into my throat, and I tried to ignore it.

My voice shaking in what I desperately hoped was an imperceptible manner, I said, "I need you to drop that."

"'Fraid I can't do that, Master 'Unter. See, I'm very fond of me own life. So I fink I'll just leave 'ere, nice and friendly like, and once I'm well on me merry way, you can have this widdle poppet back. And since you done killed all me mates, I'll only be needing the one 'ostage. That's a favor I'm doing ya there, Master."

I looked at Ana's face. I would have grinned, if I hadn't been enraged and terrified and exhausted. The man had chosen poorly. Anneliese was the least fearful of Lenz's daughters, and even if she looked a little confused, she looked much, much angrier. I succeeded in winking at her, and she took that as a signal to drive her heel into the man's kneecap. Smartly, she also tucked her head. When the man staggered, groaning, and depressed the trigger on his pistol bow, the bolt sunk harmlessly into the beams above. I raised Arielle and shot the man in the face, splattering the contents of his skull across the whimsically decorated wall of Ana's room. Ana, landing lightly on her feet, sprinted over to me. I dropped Arielle, and gathered her in my arms. I backed out of the room and slammed the door with my foot.

Outside, Ana's anger had vanished, replaced by sheer terror. She began to sob uncontrollably. "Shh, shh, Ana," I tried poorly to soothe her, a huge confusion of emotions threatening to render me a sobbing wreck along with the little girl. "It's okay now. I'm very proud of you, you know."

"R-r-r-really?" she sobbed.

"Of course, sweetie. You saved yourself. Bastards like that aren't any match for my favorite niece. Don't tell anyone I said that."

She let out a tear-filled giggle into my shoulder, and hugged me tighter. An instant later, Lenz and his whole family charged around the corner, almost trampling me. They were all shouting. "Shut up!" I roared, and pushed Ana into her mother's arms.

Ulrica Lenz, or Rikki as I liked to call her because it annoyed her, was quite petite, and had probably been stunningly beautiful when she married Lenz, 20 years ago. She had aged well, and had become handsome and dignified, even in her dressing gown, with blazing blue eyes and disheveled dark blonde hair. She was Lenz's most important business partner, and they remained deeply in love. She cared for her children with an intensity that was sometimes frightening. She also hated me, and I could not dispute the justice of it. And she was capable of extreme volumes, which she employed now. "HERR DUQUESNE! YOU WILL TELL ME THE MEANI-!"

I flinched a bit, but managed to interrupt her, "Not now, Rikki! _Really_ not now. Lenz, Wolf, you're with me. We've got to move these bodies. Rikki, get the girls outside now," I said with an emphatic sweeping motion of my left arm.

Lenz, who looked decidedly less dignified than his wife in _his_ dressing down, spluttered, "Why?"

"If I'm right, they're going to catch on fire in a few minutes. Better they do that outside." I said. "Wolf, help me with this one here," I said, jerking my thumb over my shoulder towards the door to Ana's room. "Lenz, get the one in the gallery down the stairs." They continued to stare at me, dumbfounded. "Move, damn it!"

Wolfgang Lenz, the oldest child and only son, looked a lot like his father. They both had black hair and blue eyes, and were both two or three inches taller than me. Wolf, in his youth, was slender and wirily muscular. His father, older and comfortable, was noticeably pudgy, but still stronger than your average man, a relic of his days serving as a captain of greatswords in Emperor Luitpold's invasion of Albion, before he married.

A few minutes of struggling later, and much shushing from me to the Lenz family, the three bodies were stacked in the drainage ditch at the back of the compound. We then buried these under soil drawn from a pile in the gardener's nook, lest the flame and smoke draw the attention of the neighbors or the watch.

I was thus out of reasons to put off explaining things to the family. After checking the grounds one more time and re-locking the gate, I drew them together in the big sitting room inside, and explained everything.

"I am very sorry to have put you all in so much danger, but I'm going to make sure that nothing like this happens again. I have a contract with a friend in the city who will provide your home with bodyguards at all hours of the day."

Ulrica was, unsurprisingly, fuming. The girls looked confused, and most of them were still sniffling. Wolf looked concerned. Lenz looked confused and angry.

"What is wrong with you?!" Ulrica exclaimed, and I recoiled slightly. "It's not enough that you're tearing Herr Lenz away from his family, home, and business every other week for brushes with mutation and death, and now you bring the threats of a _daemon_ on my family?! Get out, and do not come back! We are leaving the city, and your promises of protection can go hang!"

I bore her criticism with equanimity, because she was right, and I said as much. "But you absolutely cannot leave the city," I continued. "You will certainly be ambushed along the way, whether by river or land, and I cannot offer you any protection whatsoever outside the city."

"He's right, dear," Lenz was saying, though even he was glaring at me. "We'll be safer here. And Wolf can supervise the guards."

This was a good suggestion, and I seconded it to Ulrica. Wolf intended to follow his father into law, but he was not ignorant of swords and guns, and he was powerfully built, besides. I had no doubt that he had the force of will and strength of body to corral some mercenaries should the need arise.

Ulrica was still furious, but she had no answer for this circumstance. "Very well, sir. If we must tolerate this burden, then we must. But I will not have you around this house, sir, whatsoever. If I see you again, I swear to my namesake that I will beat you to death with my bare hands."

I nodded gravely, not doubting that she was serious. "As you wish, madam. Before I leave, I need to re-emphasize the importance of secrecy in this investigation. You absolutely cannot tell anyone that the cult attacked you in your home. I have no doubt that the watch is on its way now, and I will wait outside until they arrive. We must tell them that this was a simple, botched robbery, and that the robbers escaped, killing poor Eugen. Do you understand?"

They nodded their heads with varying degrees of certainty. "Lenz, do you care to join me outside the gate?"

He glared at me again, but ultimately said, "Yes. After I put the girls back to bed."

I spun on my heel, and departed the courtyard. In the street, I dropped heavily onto an old bench outside the gate, and dropped my head into my hands. Whether it was exhaustion or failure, I still don't know.

A moment later, a bottle touched my wrist. It was held in a hand, attached to an arm belonging to Lenz. I snatched the bottle and swigged. Cheap apple schnapps, but I downed it as though it were Naizon from the King's own stores.

I expelled a huge breath after swallowing, and said, "Thank the gods. First drop in days."

"I figured," he said, a little icily.

"I fucked it up, didn't I?" I said, looking up at him through my fingers

"A little more than usual, yes."

"Do I usually fuck it up?"

"Seems to happen more often when you're trying to prove a point."

"I'm always trying to prove a point."

"But you aren't always on a case."

"That's not making me feel better."

"You shouldn't feel better. You put my family in the path of a daemon. Going to be a long time before you work that one off. Speaking of, we're officially even."

"Fair enough."

"How did it go so wrong?"

"There sure as hell wasn't supposed to be a daemon, at least not yet. And when I went down that basement, I expected, maybe, to find a clue or a lead. I _didn't_ expect to find an entire cultist rathole, much less one still in use. And of course it had to burn down and destroy all the evidence. Given that the one I captured also caught on fire after I had to kill him, it seems like most of my evidence is literally going to go up in smoke. And it seems like the mission I sent young Yolk on went worse than I was expecting, judging by how many hunters showed up outside my safehouse before I came here. Normally I'd grind a case like this for a couple weeks, and since Kalbach's usually looking for reasons to make my life hell, I usually need something to keep him diverted if I want to get anything done. Things have gone way too fast, both with the investigation and the diversion. And I still have thousands of names to investigate."

"Sounds like you need help."

"You just said we were even."

"But now my family's in danger, and I'm not standing for it. I'm coming with you."

"Actually, I need a little more than your sword arm, to be perfectly frank."

"So I take it _you_ would be in _my_ debt?"

"Yes."

The corner of Lenz's mouth quirked and he said, "I'm listening."

"I've arranged for Hans to put his horde of questionable associates on this case. He wants to be paid, and more than I've got."

"How much?"

"A Hammer."

Lenz, to his credit, didn't flinch. "Probably have to move some things around, but I can do it."

The relief that flooded me was palpable, and my face fell into my hands again. The bottle, mostly empty, dropped and clattered on the paving, "Thank you."

"I'm not doing it for you. I'm not doing anything for you, ever again. Speaking of, where the devil is the watch?"

"I haven't the slightest," I said, looking up. But, as I looked, I noticed a lone individual, in a long coat and a wide-brimmed, pointed hat. "Shit," I said, hanging my head again. I was too tired to keep running, and there was no longer any point.

"Friend of yours?" Lenz asked.

"Albie."

"Ah. Is he going to kill us?"

"Why would he kill us?"

"He's a witch hunter, for one. And for another, who really knows what all you've done to earn the ire of your fellows?"

"Ouch," I said with mock outrage. I continued, "And we've seen him, so no. If he wanted you dead, he'd do it with a long rifle from a rooftop."

"Comforting," Lenz said, sounding less than comfortable.

The hunter sat down on my left side, and nonchalantly snatched the bottle from the street, and drained it. "Ric," he said to me, "Mark," to Lenz. I twitched my right arm, and felt my holdout pistol slide into my hand. I pointed it discreetly at the newcomer.

"Albie," we replied. Senior Templar, First Class Albert Hellinger was not a friend, exactly. I respected him and he me, and we were usually friendly enough. Though intelligent and quick-thinking, he was as dogmatic and almost as inflexible as von Kalbach. He was also devious and sneaky, which I respected but mainly feared.

He was the Chief of Ecclesiastical Inquisition for Carroburg and its environs, and thus was responsible for purging heresy in the temples, which meant he spent a lot of his time torturing and executing holy men. It didn't sit well with me, and I am one of the more secular souls you're likely to encounter in the Empire, which isn't to say I doubted the necessity. It sat even less well with the deeply religious Middenlanders amongst whom he plied his trade, who didn't want to think about their local temples as potentially harboring heretics and traitors, though it was depressingly common. His work sat only slightly better with the rulers of Carroburg, who did not appreciate the reputational damage his work wrought, and resented the attention of nosy Imperial servants on their younger sons and nephews, who composed most of the urban clergy.

The only people who seemed not to mind Hellinger's work were the reformers in the universities, who believed all clergymen (excepting themselves, of course) were either corrupt and decadent, or uneducated and useless. They were right, of course, but they refused to understand how the clergy kept the whole damn Empire from falling to pieces.

Hellinger also had an irritating fondness for informality and familiarity, hence the use of nicknames. He did it to unnerve his targets, and it usually worked. In short, he's a creepy fucker.

"You alone?" Albie asked me.

"Lenz is here," I said, deciding to be a little annoying. Lenz dutifully nodded his head and favored Hellinger with an ironic smile.

"Other than Mark."

"I am alone. Are you?"

"I am. Which is why I need you to stop pointing that gun at my liver."

"How do I know you won't attack me?"

"Because I _am_ alone, which means you would kill me before I could subdue you."

"Well, I'm flattered," I said. And although I wasn't entirely sure I trusted Hellinger's assessment of his own skills, I pushed the gun back up my sleeve regardless. "But I'm not in any shape to fight right now."

"Does that mean you're going to stop running, too?"

"I doubt I can actually stand up from this bench." It was true. Hardly noticing it as it happened, I had actually managed to relax a little, and the adrenaline drained from my body, leadening my limbs and causing a thousand aches, pains, bleeds, and incomplete magical heals to roar back with a vengeance, intending to repay the pain deferred with interest. I actually gasped from the rising tide of pain, and clamped down on it with a grimace.

"I can see that," Hellinger said, visibly noticing my small convulsion. He turned to Lenz and asked, "So what happened here?"

"Before we get to that," Lenz said, "where the hell is the watch?"

"They were stood down. We figured Ric would be here, so we decided it'd be better to avoid any jurisdictional fracas. So what happened?"

"Attempted robbery. Duquesne saw them off. They killed poor Eugen, my gatekeeper."

"Mm-hmm. So what really happened?" he asked me.

"Attempted robbery. Eugen died. I saw them off. I'm a hero." I said, probably failing to sound cheerful. I grimaced and panted slightly, as a particularly serious pain shot up my back.

Hellinger gave a fake, if convincing, chuckle, and said genially, "Fuck off. What _really_ happened?"

"Can't tell you what happened. I can't prove it, so it didn't happen," I said, my speech becoming shorter as I felt unconsciousness beckon.

"Sigmar, drop your obsession with evidence. You're a witch hunter. You know what happened. Tell me."

"Can't. Kalbach's orders. Just me and Yolk on the case."

"I want to know what's happening in my city, Ric."

"It's not your city, Herr Hellinger," I said, throwing his informality back in his face. "And you don't command me."

"I outrank you."

I wasn't normally one to pull rank in my own turn, but I gritted my teeth hard and said, "But I, like you, am a bureau chief. I take my orders from the Paladin, and you go hang."

"In that case, so will you. Don't expect me or my men to come to your rescue this time." I thought about protesting that he hadn't _really_ saved me last time. After all, I could easily have wriggled free of those restraints before those dumb fuck amateurs were done with their shitty little half-a-ritual and killed them all. Even if I hadn't, the daemon they would have pissed off by fucking up his summoning would have devoured them all anyway. But nope, Hellinger had to show up with twenty hunters and start gloating. I thought about saying all these things, but when I drew a breath to begin, the inflation of my lungs sent a sharp pain through my chest, and I thought better of it.

Hellinger put the bottle to his lips one more time and got out the last few drops. He tossed it into the street, where it shattered. He looked at me, and then abruptly stood, putting a hand around my upper arm, saying, "And speaking of the Paladin's order, you're coming with me, Ric-"

I don't know whether he continued speaking or stopped when he noticed me, because at that moment I pitched forward onto the cobbles (judging by the pain in my face, later), enveloped in a warm, velvety blackness.


End file.
